Evans Package

Mark is so knowlegable, he makes buying a bottle like the audio tour of a museum. You can also just get and go if you like, but stay for the experience when you can.

This place is a charming little liquor store right next door to the UPS store in the Kroger complex. At first glance, this place doesn’t seem any different from your local liquor store; one full section dedicated to beer, a wall covered with your assortment of hard liquor and a center aisle filled with liquor-​related paraphernalia.
There are two things that sets this place apart, however, and that’s Mark (the owner) and his humble but impeccable collection of Islay Scotch.
Mark isn’t your average American liquorist that merely suggests the bottle with the highest ABV to get you sloshed; he cares. That is, he cares enough about Scotch to insult you and put you in your place if you try to buy something without knowing what it’s actually worth!
Lucky for me, I knew exactly what I was looking for, so he spared me the long-​end of his usual Scotch-​spiel that he gives to ignorant Scotch «connoisseurs» whose preferred method of drinking is «on the rocks,» and instead correctly identified that I go cuckoo for peat and smoke judging by the fact that I immediately grabbed the last bottle of Ardbeg 10 he had lying around on his shelf and a bottle of Lagavulin 16 the moment I spotted it.
Which leads me to the second thing I love about this store: the Islay collection.
Mark has all but the rarest of the Islay in his modest stock: Ardbeg, Bowmore, Caol Ila, Lagavulin and Laphroaig are the ones I spotted in his little corner. He of course carries the other major «brands» like Macallan, Glenlivet, Glenfiddich, Oban, etc. and a few of your non-​scotch single malts favorites (I think I saw Yamazaki 12 and 18 on his shelf as well.)
Mark also takes orders for anything he doesn’t have in stock; I put in an order of Glenfiddich 21 GR when I visited him last, which I hope to have in my possession in two weeks time :)
The only grief I have with Mark’s charming little booze cove is – in an act that I should have performed prior to purchasing my two favorite Scotches – that a price comparison on the internet will reveal that there is about a 15% markup with some of the harder-​to-​acquire Scotches, (i.e. the two that I bought) but he gets a pass this time due to the fact that it’s hard to find places that even carries most of the things he has nowadays.
I’ll definitely be coming back.