In late 2021, more than 17,000 people entered one of the state’s drawings for a chance to buy a bottle from Oregon’s stash of highly coveted bourbons.
Leaders of an influential trade association liked what they saw and wanted in.
But instead of participating in the drawing like everyone else, an executive at the Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Association hit up a contact at the state’s liquor agency.
He asked a senior manager at the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission for a bottle of every liquor offered in the public drawing and wanted it set aside for his group’s “upcoming whiskey event.”
“This list is exactly what we’re looking for to provide to our VIP attendees that will pay to have the chance to enjoy the rare treasure,” John Hamilton, the association’s chief operating officer, wrote in an email to Will Higlin, then the OLCC’s deputy director.
The exchange adds to the growing list of examples that underscore an ingrained -- and clubby -- culture within the OLCC that allowed well-connected people to leverage ties to the agency to get scarce brands of liquor that everyday Oregonians have little chance of finding at the store.
Oregon operates a monopoly over the distribution and sale of distilled spirits, maintaining a massive warehouse where liquor is processed and sent to state-appointed liquor agents who operate stores.
The Dec. 10, 2021, email from Hamilton was among a trove of internal records released Thursday by the OLCC in response to public records requests from news organizations, including The Oregonian/OregonLive.
The release comes after the Oregon Department of Justice concluded an investigation this week without filing criminal charges against any OLCC employees who set aside bottles of high-end bourbon to buy for themselves or others.
In its report summarizing its investigation, the Justice Department said it was unable to locate anyone who could identify specific OLCC employees who had completed particular purchases and that sales records were no longer available at one store where many of the transactions took place.
The OLCC records released this week were part of the Justice Department’s review.
The investigation came after revelations last year that a half-dozen top OLCC managers, including Higlin and his boss, longtime Executive Director Steve Marks, used their positions to access prized bottles of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon and other sought-after whiskeys.
The executives said they bought the liquor for themselves or to give as gifts.
All received reprimands after an OLCC human resources inquiry and each either left the agency or were fired. A separate Oregon Government Ethics Commission investigation into their conduct continues.
Amid the human resources investigation, Marks put a stop to the practice of employees setting aside liquor for themselves. Last year, the board that oversees the state agency instituted a policy that calls for violators to be reported to the governor and the ethics commission.
The Oregonian/OregonLive previously reported other instances of people using their connections to the agency to obtain liquor for others.
In 2016, Marvin Révoal, a member of the OLCC’s governing board, asked an OLCC employee to help a friend get a case of the popular bourbon, Elmer T. Lee. The bottles are released in limited amounts each year. Révoal has since stepped down.
Another board member, Matt Maletis, also sought bottles of hard-to-find bourbon in 2022 on behalf of a nonprofit organization. He later told The Oregonian/OregonLive the request was not filled; by then, the internal HR investigation had found agency managers had set aside bourbon for themselves. He remains on the board.
The newly released records show OLCC middle managers appeared eager to oblige requests for booze.
A case in point: the December 2021 request from the Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Association.
That month, Greg Astley, the trade group’s director of government affairs, emailed two of his coworkers and copied Higlin, the deputy OLCC director. Astley confirmed he had spoken with an unnamed OLCC employee who told him that the agency “may be able to set aside a few” bottles of “antique” whiskeys included in that month’s chance-to-purchase drawing.
Higlin seemed happy to help, the records show: “Gentlemen, I’m on this,” he wrote. “I will be in touch once I can figure out what products might be available.”
Higlin wrote to his boss Marks and to Chris Mayton, who at the time oversaw the OLCC’s distilled spirits program, about the request, calling the lobbying group “our” partners.
He told Mayton and Marks that the restaurant organization wanted “any ‘rare whiskeys’ that we could provide them.”
“They are requesting one bottle each from our chance to purchase catalog,” Higlin wrote. “I know this is a challenging request, but anything we can do for them would be appreciated.”
Mayton, like Higlin, was among the top managers disciplined for setting aside bourbon for himself. Higlin and Mayton were fired after the human resources investigation became public last year.
The emails indicate that the warehouse manager, Nikki Leslie, pulled together bottles for the restaurant association. Leslie was not disciplined in the matter; she has since left the agency.
In one email, she told Higlin and Mayton that she would “do her best to ensure that they get a few bottles. I have also been setting aside a few other highly allocated items so they have a pretty good selection.”
So-called allocated bottles tend to be in high demand and distributed in limited quantities to the state’s retail liquor stores and restaurants. Among them: Pappy Van Winkle, produced by Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. The distillery also makes Elmer T. Lee, another popular bourbon.
In Oregon, restaurants and bars buy from liquor stores, making it especially difficult for a regular bourbon shopper to find bottles released in limited quantities. The state began offering drawings in 2018 to give Oregonians a shot at buying Pappy Van Winkle and other bottles of liquor in short supply.
Leslie later wrote to Higlin to let him know she tracked down 11 bottles, including Pappy Van Winkle 10 year, 12 year and 15 year.
The list included other premium bottles, such as Suntory Yamazaki 18 year, which sells in Oregon for $449.95, and Whistlepig Boss Hog Lapulapu’s Pacific, which retails for $491.95.
“Please let me know which items they would like,” Leslie wrote to Higlin.
She said in the email she would arrange shipment to a liquor store where a representative of the restaurant group could buy the bottles.
The emails do not show how many the trade group ended up obtaining.
In August 2022, the Restaurant & Lodging Association hosted “Swig & Savor,” billing it as a “unique event featuring top-shelf” whiskeys, among them “allocated and rare products.” The promotional material called the event “an opportunity that does not currently exist in the Pacific Northwest market.”
Attendees who bought VIP tickets for $349 a piece were entered into “a raffle with drawings for hard-to-get allocated bottles.”
Hamilton and Astley, the restaurant association executives who made the requests, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The records show OLCC fielded requests from others, including at least one lawmaker and some employees.
In February 2021, Mayton emailed the warehouse manager to ask: “Can we get Lagavulin Scotch, senator asking.” He clarified in follow-up messages that the lawmaker wanted the 8-year bottle shipped to a liquor store in Redmond.
Unlike Pappy Van Winkle and Elmer T. Lee, the scotch is not in short supply. During the OLCC’s human resources investigation, Mayton told an investigator he routinely fielded requests from a variety of people, including lawmakers, for liquor and considered filling those orders part of the job.
Leslie told Mayton that the state had 11 cases of Lagavulin scotch in the state’s warehouse and that she would arrange to have one shipped to a store in Redmond.
Mayton told her that the lawmaker, who was not identified in the emails, had texted Marks, the agency’s executive director, about the request as well.
It is unclear which lawmaker made the request. Sen. Tim Knopp’s district covers Redmond; the Bend Republican told The Oregonian/OregonLive last year that he never had liquor set aside for him by OLCC. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Requests for liquor came from within the agency as well.
Sometimes the sought-after bottles were in stock. Records show that in one instance, a manager went directly to the distiller.
In late 2018, Brian Flemming, the OLCC retail services manager, asked a Buffalo Trace Distillery representative for a case of Elmer T. Lee “for a couple of executives at OLCC who are requesting some bottles. They missed the last little bit that was available.”
The executives were not identified in the email. Flemming was originally placed on paid leave and is now on “protected” leave, according to agency spokesperson Mark Pettinger. Pettinger declined to respond to questions about the nature of Flemming’s leave of absence, his salary or how much the state has paid Flemming since he went on leave last year.
A couple of weeks later, Buffalo Trace Distillery came through, advising Flemming to be on the lookout for the shipment “so that the case gets set aside and does not accidentally get sent to a store.”
Flemming forwarded the news to Mayton, manager of the distilled spirits program, with instructions to keep tabs on the shipment. Flemming told him that his Buffalo Trace connection “pulled a few strings” to secure the extra shipment.
“Lock it aside!!” he told Mayton.
The emails also show several instances of employees, including Flemming and Higlin, appearing to use work hours to track down information on the availability of certain liquors apparently for personal use.
In June 2018, Flemming asked an office coordinator in the agency’s retail services department for help finding him a bottle of Elmer T. Lee.
“You would think I wouldn’t have to try so hard. lol,” Flemming wrote to his coworker, who wrote back the same day with news that Milwaukie Liquor, a store about two miles from agency headquarters, was holding a bottle for him.
In another instance, on Aug. 8, 2019, Leslie, the warehouse manager, wrote to Higlin to let him know a bottle of “Crown Peach is in my office.”
“OK,” he wrote back, “I’ll be down soon.”
-- Noelle Crombie is an enterprise reporter with a focus on the justice system. Reach her at 503-276-7184; ncrombie@oregonian.
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