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The Bourbon Fox & Hound

By Invitation, Open to All

The BFH Lodge.

The Lodge is the front porch, free and open to anyone. It is where the Hound writes when a bottle surfaces near you — no more than six short notes a month, plus one long dispatch on the second Tuesday of the month. Leave a name and the early calls and the quiet letters start landing in your inbox. Nothing on this list is sponsored and nothing about it is sold.

Free · invitation by email
A tall amber-filled bourbon bottle emerging from deep shadow next to a Glencairn glass, with distant candle glow.

Issue Zero opens the moment you sign — the Hound's baseline filing report on Missouri's bourbon paperwork.

Your address is never sold, never rented, and never handed to another publisher's list. It is held by the Hound and by the mail platform that sends the dispatch, and nowhere else. Every dispatch carries a way out at the bottom, and leaving takes one line. The privacy policy spells out the whole of it.

Six

shadow invites a month at the most, by email

One

long dispatch a month, on the second Tuesday

One hour

from a confirmed shelf sighting to your inbox

Zero

paid placements, ever

What a Name Gets You

Four things come with the name.

No. 01

Shadow Invites

Once the Hound confirms a rare bottle on a familiar shelf, the note goes out by email within the hour, and only to the members close enough to go get it. The Hound sends no more than six of these in a month, and fewer when the shelves are quiet.

No. 02

Issue Zero

The baseline filing report opens the moment you leave a name. Once a month the Hound photographs every brand registered to sell in Missouri and files the copy away, because the state keeps no history of its own. Issue Zero is the starting line the later issues get measured against.

No. 03

Letters from the Hound

One long dispatch carries honest reviews, distillery dossiers, half-finished thoughts, and the occasional confession. It lands once a month on the second Tuesday, so it never turns up on a weekend.

No. 04

Regional Intel

Tell us your closest city and we tell you what is sitting on shelves you can actually reach. Today the Hound only writes from shelves close enough to stand in front of, which means Greater St. Louis, Ballwin, and the Metro East. The map widens as the coverage does.

A redacted sample

What a shadow invite reads like.

Example Shadow Invite Tuesday, 4:12 PM CT Ballwin, MO

A single barrel of a long-aged Indiana bourbon just landed at a shop in Ballwin, where two bottles were still on the shelf at 4 PM.

The shop at [ — ] has [ — ] on the shelf this afternoon: eight years old, finished in [ — ], and bottled at 112 proof. Shelf price is [ — ], which is honest for what is in the bottle.

Two bottles were still there when the Hound walked past, so call before you drive. Nobody here has poured this one yet, which means there is no tasting note attached — this is a sighting, and the write-up waits for the pour.

The Hound · sent at 4:12 PM on a Tuesday · unsubscribe address at the bottom

Bottle, retailer, and price are withheld in this public sample, which is written to show the shape of a shadow invite rather than to report a particular night. Members receive the full text with names and the address.

The Promise

What the Lodge will not do.

  • —Your email is never sold and never added to a third-party list.
  • —Never lands the long dispatch on a weekend, because it goes out on the second Tuesday of the month. A shadow invite goes when the bottle is actually on the shelf, whatever day that turns out to be.
  • —Never carries paid placements, sponsored sections, or affiliate links inside tasting write-ups. See the disclosures.
  • —Never sends more than six shadow invites in a month. If the Hound is quiet, the inbox stays quiet.
  • —Carries an unsubscribe address at the bottom of every dispatch, and one line to it takes you off the list.

The Deeper Room

The Inner Circle is open.

Everything above stays free and stays yours. The Inner Circle adds two things on top of it: the Lottery Board, where every allocated-bottle drawing the Hound tracks sits on a single page with the rule for who may enter and the authority's own entry link, and the pen on the Pour Wall, where members post the pour in front of them under their own names. Seven dollars a month or fifty-nine a year, and everyone who signed up before the doors opened is in free, for life.

Join the Inner Circle See what is inside →