Inside the Beverly Hills Whiskey Shop That Stocks the World’s Rarest Spirits

Richard Carleton Hacker
·3 min read
7

You’ve just closed a megawatt deal and want to celebrate with something special. Like, rare special. Such as, say, Karuizawa 50 Year Old, a sherry-barrel-aged 1965 vintage single malt: At $150,000 a bottle, from a Japanese distillery that no longer exists, it’s practically unobtainium—unless you happen to swing by the Double Barrel & the Whisky Shoppe on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. This elegantly rustic enclave, which combines the decor of a 19th-century hunting lodge with the wood-paneled ambiance of an Edwardian den, holds enough extraordinary whiskeys to fill its locker-lined walls, with more limited editions tantalizingly displayed around the space. For whiskey collectors, it might as well be Mecca.

Here one will find such rarities as the Balvenie 40 Year Old ($6,900), the Yamazaki 18 Year Old Mizunara Single Malt ($11,000), and WhistlePig “The Boss Hog” Straight Rye Whiskey Edition #1 ($26,000). Want to try before you buy? Amazingly, you can do that, too, with single pours of the aforementioned Yamazaki and WhistlePig going for $250 and $600, respectively. The front room houses equally exceptional wines, including the Château Lafite Rothschild 1982 ($4,500), the Petrus Pomerol 1986 ($5,600), and the Château Mouton Rothschild 1945 “Victory Vintage” that celebrated the end of WWII ($6,000 for a 375 ml half-bottle). Combined, there are several thousand bottles of the most exclusive—and elusive—whiskeys and wines to be found anywhere in the world.

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A small sampling of the retailer’s thousands of rare bottles.
A small sampling of the retailer’s thousands of rare bottles.

“Some whiskeys I have here are so rare I don’t have to be competitive, but I still try to be,” says Deep Sethi, who co-owns and manages the store with his daughter, Simran. Sethi says he wants to be known for the same approach his brothers Sukhinder and Rajbir Singh took when they founded the Whisky Exchange in London 25 years ago (it was acquired by Pernod Ricard in 2021), which is to provide “rarity, but also value.” Which is good news for Whisky Shoppe customers since, with the Singhs still actively involved in the rare-whiskey world, there’s little Sethi can’t get.

But don’t expect to just pop in and clean house. The best bottles typically go to members, all of whom make a $500 minimum whiskey purchase four times a year. Want your own private locker? That requires a $25,000 buy (members share lockers otherwise), though the space offers more than just storage. Besides the clubby indoor lounge, there’s also an outdoor patio perfect for enjoying a cigar and a dinner menu featuring barrel-aged cocktails and—naturally—superb wines and spirits by the glass.

Word of mouth has attracted a diverse roster of clientele spanning collectors, investors, and A-listers who simply want to sample some of the best spirits in the world. Yet Sethi doesn’t take the whole thing as solemnly as one might expect. Though he refers to his customers as “serious whiskey drinkers,” he says the periodic tastings he hosts with distillery representatives, for example, are meant to be “educational and fun at the same time.” To that end, and following his ethos of providing both rarity and value, VIP members can expect a complimentary shot of Pappy Van Winkle 23 Year Old on their birthdays—a rare gift from a spirits retailer indeed.

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