On the trail of Pappy Van Winkle (after Wright Thompson's Pappyland)

The Pappy Van Winkle bourbon that is taking the world by storm today can be traced all the way back to Julian's grandfather, the Pappy in Pappy Van Winkle. Some key aspects of Pappy's bio are provided in the graphic below.

As Wright Thompson said in his book Pappyland, "On that Derby Day in 1935, Pappy Van Winkle stepped away from his competition and released a different kind of Bourbon into the market, one of this place -- of his place." As Wright further states, using wheat in bourbon was not Pappy's idea -- but he was the first to mass produce it.

Source: Compiled from Pappyland

A number of factors led to a crash of the bourbon market in the 1960s (Thompson):

• The vodka lobby finally changed the laws to give itself a designation
• From neutral grain spirit to vodka
• The James Bond effect
• The industry panicking and raising the barrel entry price to make more product
• Reduced the quality of the whiskey
• Making light bourbon that went better in cocktail mixes
• Bourbon was what your father drank.

The Stitzel-Weller Distillery suffered as a result of the market downturn and it was during this period that Pappy turned it over to Julian Sr. A week after taking over the business in 1964, Julian Sr. put an Old Fitzgerald on the market at a "watered-down 86.8 proof.' According to Wright, this was most likely done with Pappy's approval and saved him the fate of having to take that step while he still controlled the business. 

Julian Sr., and his sister split Pappy's 51% ownership stake in the company but some intra-family issues caused her to side with the 49% owners in a decision to sell the company. The distillery was eventually sold to Norton Simon in 1972. "Diageo, after buying the business, shipped the old Stitzel-Weller barrels to Canada where they became a tiny percentage of the Crown Royal blend."

Julian had gotten into the bourbon business working with his father. After the sale of the business he eventually launched his own fledgling effort out of a broken-down facility in Lawrenceburg. He was buying barrels from the Old Boone Distillery and bottling them as Old Rip Van Winkle. "Every now and then he would get some barrels of Stitzel-Weller and put them out under a special label."

One day Julian received a call from Diageo: They were shutting down the Stitzel-Weller plant and was trying to find buyers for the barrels in its cellar. In reviewing the list, Julian saw barrels priced as low as $200. "Diageo didn't know what they had but Julian did." He went looking for funds and eventually got someone to extend him a line of credit and began buying up as many barrels as he could afford.

He bottled the bourbon under the label Van Winkle Family Reserve and put Pappy's picture on the label. According to Julian, "The first year we bottled the 20-year, it was awesome." Pappy got a 99 score from the Beverage Testing Institute in 1996 and was named the greatest bourbon in the world.

Six years after he introduced Pappy's on the market, Buffalo Trace Distillery called and offered to buy into his brand, an offer which he readily accepted.

According to Thompson, four different whiskeys have been bottled under the label of Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve:

1. The first Pappy -- Old Boone distilled in the 1970s. Julian was sitting on aged barrels of it that he didn't want to go to waste. This was good whiskey.
2. Long run of Stitzel-Weller -- when people think of the Pappy taste, this is what they are imagining. This was great whiskey. "Once the big brands realized what Julian had done, and how the public had responded, these barrels became difficult to get ahold of." In addition to the Stitzel-Weller that he had secured on the market, the partnership with Buffalo Trace gave Julian access to aged Stitzel-Weller bourbon that Trace had acquired when it bought the W. L. Weller brand and stocks from Diageo two years prior.
3. Bernheim barrels -- used to fill the gap between the end of the Stitzel-Weller stock and the maturation of the Buffalo Trace distilled product. This bourbon had the Van Winkle wheated mash bill but was inconsistent in quality
4. Buffalo Trace distillation whiskey.

When the Buffalo Trace 15-year-old whiskey was tasted by Julian, it got his seal of approval. His grandfather's juice had been brought back to life

©Wine -- Mise en abyme