In broad strategic strokes, yes. But that assumes a working transportation network. I’m curious how much British breweries have relied on just-in-time procurement for production.
I have Irish ancestry that left for Australia during the Potato Famine, so the headlines at the time gave me a shudder, even if it was just the chippers.
Chill. Priti Patel’s threats to starve Ireland were just her being her usual arsehole. It’s for the papers, not anything else. Produce goes more the other direction and, as agriculture is an intertwined all island industry, it’s partially protected both north and south by the very popular Northern Ireland protocol.
NI is doing pretty well out of it. Had they embraced the idea of Asian free trade special export zones they would be making serious fucking bank but some of the politicians depend more on their culture war than anything else. Even when it is to the great detriment of their voters.
Some things are still running on time, then.
It seems like spirits would be a better choice for a strategic reserve. They take up less space and don’t really spoil the same way.
this supports my plan to hoard all the gin on this key!
my martini will not be denied!
Putin is concerned and wants to know!
Is the shortage due to 1) a lack of drivers on the island so domestic product isn’t delivered, or 2) a lack of drivers to haul booze in from the continent? If (1), smuggling won’t help much. If (2), dope smugglers can open new lines of business, but with bulkier products. I predict a jump in opioid usage.
If you’d like some Dry gin that’s actually from London… (and very very citrusy) East London Liquor Company London Dry Gin - Master of Malt
How was it Jim Hacker put it? Those people sitting over there are the opposition. The enemy? Your’re sitting among them.
According to Winston Churchill, the next two items on the list are “sodomy” and “the lash”
I’ve heard it attributed to Churchill but I guess that might be the way everything in Ireland is attributed to Wilde and to Twain in the US.
@anon77190095 website said sorry no because brexit 
I don’t know if anyone bothers(because it can’t be stored just by pumping it back down an oil well, which makes storage costly relative to its value; and because siloing grain is just one step upstream and gives you more options); but if it were a priority I’d imagine that the thing you’d stockpile would be boring old Neutral Grain Spirit. Just dilute down from the factory-fresh 190 proof, flavor if flavor is a thing that the booze you are ‘producing’ is supposed to have; and slap a label and brand name suggestive(but not purporting to promise in a legally binding sense) of artisanal small batch production and an emotionally salient family history of excellence and you are good to go.
What would be interesting to see is how quickly(and whether fast enough to outpace some other measure being taken to improve truck driver availability by quietly walking something back that was previously touted as an unassailable principle of Albion) the supply and distribution chain could adjust to an arrangement where final dilution and flavoring are moved much closer to the consumer, so that only shipments of the comparatively high density and high versatility concentrate need to consume trucking capacity.
In principle it wouldn’t be rocket surgery; but I suspect that there would be some legal and practical headaches if you leapt in unprepared.
What you’ve basically just imagined is Victory Gin.
But that is not how most spirit is made. Even terrible gin typically re-distills with aromatics, as does flavored vodka. But anything aged very much involves “stock piling” by it’s very nature. And UK regs require 3 years minimum for Whisky, via Scotland they have some of the largest and oldest cellars in the world. With massive amounts of barrelled whisky pending.
Even unaged spirit and neutral grain spirit. There tends to be quite a lot in storage/process. Particularly from the sorts of very large, global brands the UK is home to.
So there is already very much a reserve. And what you’re thinking would pretty much be rocket surgery.
Cause you’d be both completely reinventing the way spirit is produced. And distributing small stills, cellar operations and bottling plants. To avoid trucking.
Never mind most of the stills are made in Europe. Most of the bottles are too. The flavorings. And you’re now shipping all that ancillary stuff to a thousand locations instead of a few. Packaging, equipment, components. Which is not going avoid or reduce trucking at all.
Yes and yes. Drivers from eastern Europe who used to work full-time in the UK have gone home, and European haulage companies don’t want to take loads to and from the UK because it’s all too much hassle now.
Or just call it “Victory Gin”. The perfect accompaniment to the chco ration that will soon replace sweets from the Continent.
[ETA: I owe a Coke to @Ryuthrowsstuff ]
Ahem.
Some posters can’t see posts from other posters. Voluntarily.
I did not have Brexibition on my “what other fresh hell are reactionary fascist-leaning fuckwits brewing today?” bingo card.
How about a Victory Coke?
