WASHINGTON, DC- OCTOBER 08:
Photos for a story about the popularity of Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon, … [+]
It’s about a the bourbon aficionadi’s passion for good drink. Think of the following Xmas shopping exercise as the ultimate American luxury scavenger hunt, beginning each year in October and running right through the holiday drinking season to the new year.
This quest for luxury begins in the Kentucky Bluegrass, where the distillers prize the high mineral content of the water because it makes such good whiskey. Ninety-five percent of all bourbon produced comes from Kentucky. Right now, November, is the time of year at which the quest for one particular brand, the delicately-aged ”wheated” Pappy Van Winkle, is at its peak.
It’s a vast, nationwide connoisseurs’ free-for-all played out every autumn. Put a different way, the tiny production batches of the smooth-sipping Pappy have manufactured an overheated gray market as well as a thriving black market, which kick into overdrive every year before the holidays, the dagger point of the drinking season.
Distilled by the Van Winkles for six generations in Kentucky – the current head of the distillery is scion Julian Van Winkle, whose son works beside him – there are exactly five Van Winkle bourbons aged from ten to twenty-three years in the charred-oak barrels. On the distiller’s suggested price list, the bottles range from $70 to $300 per fifth (750 ml). The Van Winkles’ annual rollout through the wholesalers is slow – it can take until slightly before Christmas until the liquor actually hits the shelves.
But: Every year, because the production runs are what they are, it’s quite difficult to find bottles of Pappy, and if you do, they will definitely not be at the suggested price. The 23-year old Pappy, named for founding distiller Julian ”Pappy” Van Winkle, retails for $2000-$3000 per bottle and up, depending upon the character of the middlemen attached to this or that shipment, as factored through their ability to corral a pallet or two. State-controlled stores in the South provide a reading of the (legal) gray market price after the ghostly hands of the Van Winkles’ wholesaler/distributors have handled them. Currently, the Alabama state-owned liquor stores list the 23-year-old Pappy at the bargain-basement price of $1800-plus per 750 ml bottle. Such stores have lines of people camping in front of them overnight after the release dates have been announced.
Four thousand dollars is said to be the (unconfirmed) top price for that oldest Pappy bottle, which puts it in the stratosphere with the rarest Bordeaux, Champagnes and cognacs. But that’s only if you’re not trying to jump the queue. If you’re jumping a queue ahead of, say, some distributors who have paid dearly to get there, the sky’s the limit.
The hunt for Pappy, and how the ad hoc market for it works, is a holiday ritual and Southern tragi-comedy rolled into one.
Alternatively, if you simply MUST have a bottle and don’t have the time, today, to jet down to the Alabama state stores (who still have a few bottles in stock, incidentally), and back, then just wander in to your nearest high-end bar and buy a bottle from the bartender to take home. It’ll run you double to treble what they really go for, say, north of $5000 some where. If the bartender’s manager will allow it.
But you can rationalize your outlay this way: That estimated $5000-$10,000 is nothing compared to what Jay-Z, Diddy, and/or Dr. Dre would be dropping on bottle service for some of Diddy’s Ciroc in a nightclub.