What a waste

I heard a snippet of a song lyric today that resonated with me:

"...Cause why tip toe through life, to arrive safely at death..."

And that lyric came to mind again when I read this story:

Three bottles of rare, 19th century Scotch found beneath the floor boards of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackelton's abandoned expedition base were returned to the polar continent Saturday after a distiller flew them to Scotland to recreate the long-lost recipe....

...Bottled in 1898 after the blend was aged 15 years, the Mackinlay bottles were among three crates of Scotch and two of brandy buried beneath a basic hut Shackleton had used during his dramatic 1907 Nimrod excursion to the Antarctic... 

...The whisky will be transferred by March from Ross Island to Shackelton's desolate hut at Cape Royds and replaced beneath the restored hut as part of a program to protect the legacy of the so-called heroic era of Antarctic exploration from 1898 to 1915.

130 year old Scotch and what did they do with it?  Sent it back to the freakin' South Pole to be put back where it was found.  Without having a drink of it.

Yeah, yeah, they took a sample via a hypodermic needle through the cork, so they can replicate the recipe.  But they can't replicate 130 year old Scotch, at least not in my lifetime.

I don't know what the extreme cold might have done to it - it wasn't frozen when they found it, but really, why shouldn't someone get to try it?  How is burying, what could possibly be, the best glass of Scotch this side of heaven, "protecting the legacy' of Antarctic exploration?  The explorers didn't take it there so that it could be buried forever, they took it to drink!