Book Review: Pappyland -- A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things that Last

A couple of weeks ago I paid $40 to attend a Zoom webinar featuring Julian Van Winkel (of Pappy Van Winkel fame) and Wright Thompson, author of the book Pappyland, purportedly discussing the book which has Julian's story at its core. In addition to participation in the webinar, paid attendees received a signed copy of Pappyland. Over 1000 people attended the webinar.

Julian Van Winkle and Wright Thompson

I found the webinar to be disorganized and uninformative. There was no plan, no direction, no sense of what they wanted to convey to attendees. The author did not step up and guide the dialogue with either focused or open questions; rather, it devolved into meaningless (for me) banter on a wide range of issues that would not satiate a Pappy-information-hungry individual.

Maybe, to some extent, I approached the book with the wrong expectations. I was seeking a tale of the genesis of this legendary bourbon, the trials and travails of its birth and life, the people and institutions that nurtured its rise, and the pursuit of the juice by "Pappyists." But that is not what has been delivered.

The book has a wonderful cover and end papers but the heavy weight of the pages, and the deckled edges, make it difficult to turn from one page to the next. It is 244 pages in length but the type size and spacing are generous, presenting a more formidable perception than is delivered.

Pappyland end papers

Within the book, Pappyland is more about the ecosystem within which Julian and his family exists rather than the history of the juice. That is not to say that the latter is not treated, but that the treatment is so jumbled, inconsistent, and foreshortened, that one has to take notes in order to develop any measure of cohesion. The first entry into that realm begins on page 60 and is sprinkled throughout the rest of the book.

I initially had said that there was no throughline to this book but I was wrong. The throughline has been so stretched out that it has broken into myriad pieces, each of which has burrowed deeply into a forest of "feelgoodism."

The author's story is woven into the narrative. I neither understood, or bought into, the rationale or its implementation.

Julian is a nice guy but he is not extraordinary, nor is he doing extraordinary things on a daily basis. Building a book around his life and lifestyle, punctuated by incursions of the author's life, seems a miss to me. There is some good material on bourbon, its history, the family history, etc., which I have been able to stitch together and will report in a subsequent post, but that could have been handled in an article rather than a book.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme