Sad news. Condolences to the family.
As for the actual products, I tend to be more forgiving. While I still haven’t found a permanent place for my Fee’s Rhubarb (or, frankly, most of the other goofball bitters I’ve acquired), it sure has been fun experimenting. The availability of products other than Angostura and Peychaud’s helped me view cocktail recipes as baselines that could be played with—and just possibly, improved upon. As a bonus, all the A/B testing certainly upped my alcohol consumption.
And the popularity of Feegan’s says as much about Regan’s as it does Fee’s, no?