If you own restaurants and bars, it’s inevitable that work will sometimes bleed over into your personal life—which can end up being hugely beneficial when the work involves whiskey. Max Goldberg, co-owner and managing partner of Strategic Hospitality Group in Nashville, Tennessee, has taken advantage of the perks of the job to self-educate on all things whiskey, learning from professionals behind the bar and discovering his own palate and preferences along the way.

Goldberg could enjoy any number of pours from the likes of Bastion, The Patterson House, Friends in Low Places, and Strategic’s other venues. But his home collection is enviably vast, totaling around 6,000 bottles of which he estimates 10 percent are currently open. Still, he’s willing to pop the cork on almost anything. 

“I don’t have whiskey to have it; I have it to share it,” he says. “My buddy and I could go open a bottle of bourbon, each have a drink or two from it, and then we can go back to it in a few months and share that same bourbon, and again in ten years. I love that you can have a shared bottle that’s a bit timeless, as long as you preserve the temperature and make sure there’s no sunlight on it. You can share whiskey with people for years and years and years.”

There’s just one bottle that Goldberg is saving for the future. “Everything else, I think that it should be enjoyed,” he says. “As we get older, we realize how precious every day is. As my mom might say, ‘Eat dessert first because, after all, life is uncertain.’ I feel that way about whiskey too.”

Keep reading to find out the identity of that special bottle, which wheater is Goldberg’s everyday drinker, and what advice he has for people who are new to whiskey collecting.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Unicorn Review: What got you started in the world of whiskey, and how did you shift into collecting?

Max Goldberg: I'm fortunate to be in the hospitality industry, surrounded by some of the most talented chefs and bartenders in the world. Sixteen years ago, talking with the bartenders, I asked them what they were excited about and they would kind of coach me and educate me. I found myself, with the little free time and very little extra disposable income I had, going into different distilleries and liquor stores and just trying new products.

Then we started doing some barrel picks for the restaurants—going and seeing the distilleries and learning about what they were doing and just developing a passion for it.

I'd always buy two bottles of whatever I was trying—one to enjoy and to share, and then one to keep for a later date.

Sixteen years later, I've accidentally grown the collection to over 6,000 bottles and love sharing whiskey more than anything. I love that it creates a vehicle for conversation, and for me it's just something I really enjoy. There's no way I'll ever be able to drink the amount of whiskey I have. So to be able to share it with loved ones is awesome. It's one of my favorite things to do.

Does your collection have a focus or is it a little bit of everything?

It's mostly bourbon and whiskey. I've got probably 400 or 500 bottles of scotch. I've got a bunch of different mezcals and tequilas and different gins—a good collection of spirits.

But the bulk of it is definitely bourbon and whiskey. There's some really interesting things from Taiwan and Japan and different markets. There's a lot of great Buffalo Trace products, a lot of great early Uncle Nearest products, and a lot of Willett. Drew [Kulsveen] from Willett is one of my favorite human beings on the planet.

My wife and I have done two barrel picks of Willett, and each time we did it we were in the process of trying to get pregnant. We did a barrel pick the first time and one week later, we found out that she was pregnant. So we affectionately named the barrel pick that we did “The One” because it was our first child. This past year we decided we wanted to grow our family and we tried to get pregnant, and sure enough it timed out. We're doing a barrel pick, and the week after that we found out that we were pregnant again. So as my wife likes to joke, babies by Willett—it's a very real thing for us.

Some people see their collection as an investment, while others let their passions direct them. Do you have a collecting philosophy?

If you look at it as an investment, it's been phenomenal. But as my wife reminds me, it's only an investment if you're willing to sell it. I've never sold a bottle and I never will. For me, it's really just been a fun collecting process. I enjoy finding products I like and then getting different barrel picks or making sure there's different years [from the brand]. I love building verticals, I love tasting years against each other. I love that process.

But in terms of any type of strategy, no, it's really just what's out there that's interesting that people are excited about.

What’s the most valuable bottle in your collection?

I’d rather not say. It’s a bourbon. My insurance people told me not to talk about specifics.

How about the least valuable bottle? Do you have anything run-of-the-mill?

There’s some that are maybe more accessible, but I wouldn't say least valuable. I'm a proud Tennessee Squire (a member of the Jack Daniel’s Society), and I've got some really fun vintage Jack Daniel’s and special one-offs they did. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s, you can find in any bar or liquor store in the world. I'd say that that's a very accessible bottle, and I'll always have a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

What’s your favorite bottle in the collection?

To quote Tom Brady, the next one. No, I think that the one I'm most excited about is one which was actually a gift from Drew from Willett. [It’s] a very special bottle. My wife and I got married, and we decided that we're going to save that bottle, and that'll be the first bottle that I open to share a drink with my son. And I've got another boy on the way. So that'll be a really special bottle that becomes part of our family's history, because that'll be the first drink we all have together.

Are there any bottles that are off-limits to guests?

What's on the table and open, I'm happy to share. If there's something that someone wants to try, they usually will just ask permission to open it. And depending on the evening, we'll see how it goes. But typically I'll open anything for a good friend.

With such a huge collection, do you ever get decision fatigue, where you can’t figure out what whiskey you want to drink?

No. If I'm going to have a drink, just me and my wife, and it's just an easy evening, it's hard to beat Weller 12. Weller 12 is definitely an old standby, just one of my absolute favorites that instantly delivers and is always a go-to for me.

Has your experience running a major hospitality group informed your collecting, or vice-versa?

I've never taken a bottle out of the business. But sometimes through my private collection, I'm able to get things that I can share with some of the team. If we realize something is really special and we want to get it for the business, the business would make an investment into a special or rare bottle. So that's been great.

And really getting to know the different distilleries and different people making it through the scale of what we're doing in the businesses has been such a joy personally. Getting to meet those folks and doing barrel picks for the businesses has certainly impacted how I collect. I think how I collect has impacted how we're doing some of these barrel picks. It's just been a beautiful cycle.

Do you have any advice for someone who wants to get into collecting whiskey?

Whiskey, to me, is very similar to art. What you like is what you should like, and you shouldn't be influenced or impacted by what you read or hear. You can certainly listen to the experts, but if you're getting into it, just go try what you like and then lean into that and really try to find the people who are doing things with a lot of integrity.

Obviously you have some of the bigger houses that will forever be great, but for some of these newer brands like an O.H. Ingram or what Pablo [Moix] is doing at Rare Character [or other limited releases], go deep on those and go seek those things out. It’s an interesting time in bourbon in general right now.

One of the saddest stories I heard was this guy who loved whiskey, but would never open it because it was just too precious. He came home one day and the shelf had collapsed and the majority of his collection had broken. He was devastated that his collection was broken, but he was also devastated that he kept it and never tried it. So my advice for any collector is get the bottle and open the bottle.