Last week, about a dozen people met in the Richmond dining room of the stately Virginia Hotel in Cape May, New Jersey. Having each spent just under $1,000 for a dinner, paired whiskeys, and stories from fourth-generation bourbon maestro Preston Van Winkle, they were seeking something transcendent: a spirit soaring high above the top shelf, somewhere in the mesosphere.
Preston’s great-grandfather Julian “Pappy” Van Winkle Sr. began selling bourbon from a horse and buggy in the 1890s and opened the Stitzel-Weller Distillery, just outside Louisville, Kentucky, on Derby Day in 1935, producing whiskey until he died, three decades later.
Today, the sought-after bourbons bearing his name are as likely to be mentioned in the police blotter as at the top of spirits-competition lists. In 2013, dozens of bottles, worth as much as $100,000 on the black market, were stolen in an inside job known as “Pappygate,” which later became the subject of a Netflix documentary.
Counterfeit Pappy has become a persistent problem as empty bottles sold online are filled with all manner of rotgut, re-sealed, and offered again elsewhere for thousands of dollars. Members of state liquor-regulating agencies from Pennsylvania to Oregon have been embroiled in scandals revolving around bottles of Pappy.
But there were no worries about bogus booze as Preston held court and executive chef Jason Hanin, of the Ebbitt Room at the Virginia, offered up a sublime four-course-dinner pairing of Old Rip Van Winkle whiskeys: venison carpaccio and osetra caviar (with Old Rip Van Winkle 10-year), a rich rabbit ragu with shaved black truffles (Pappy Van Winkle 15-year), Japanese Wagyu with seared foie gras (Pappy 20-year), and sticky toffee pudding (Pappy 23-year). “There’s nothing else like it on the planet,” Preston said of the 23-year. “It really is the perfect way to end an evening.”
At auction, such a bottle can cost upward of $50,000. A single shot, if you can find a bar that carries it, might set you back $300. If you’re going to part with that kind of money, you may as well do it right. Most bourbon drinkers assume that means drinking it neat, but that’s not necessarily the case, as I learned. If you want to drink it like “Pappy” (whose face graces the bottles), Julian Jr. (who took time out from the bourbon business to be a World War II hero), Julian Van Winkle III (the current Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery president), and Preston, read on.
A number of years back, Preston was in Breckenridge, Colorado, on a ski trip and beat the rest of his party to dinner. “They had a bottle of 10-year Old Rip at the bar,” he recalled, referring to Old Rip Van Winkle 10-year. “So I ordered a 10-year on the rocks with a splash and a twist. And the bartender said, ‘Oh, man, I don’t think I can do that. Pappy would roll over in his grave.’ And I said, ‘Oh, really?’ He said, ‘I can give you the water and the ice, and you can doctor it up however you want.’ So I said, ‘O.K.’ He brought me the fixin’s and I did it.”
Dozens of bottles, worth as much as $100,000 each on the black market, were stolen in an inside job known as “Pappygate,” which later became the subject of a Netflix documentary.
Preston said he handed the bartender his credit card. “I saw him look at it. And then he froze. And he calls the manager over. And the manager’s shaking his head. So the bartender walks back over and says, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Van Winkle.’” Preston went on to tell the bartender, “A lot of people have misconceptions about our whiskey. But that’s how Pappy liked it. It’s how he drank it. And that’s how my grandfather drank it. And my dad. And now me. You should really try it.”
Don’t let a barkeep pull rank on you. Tell them that while Preston says they can drink their Van Winkle bourbons whatever way they want to, you would rather drink your Pappy exactly the way that Pappy would do it: on the rocks with a splash of water and a twist of lemon.
There are whispers that the bourbon boom of the last two decades is suffering a post-pandemic hangover, that a combination of lockdown-era stockpiling and lowered demand among young people has America’s “native spirit” heading for an epic bust.
But don’t count bourbon out just yet. Despite everything from George Washington leading a 13,000-man army against small-scale Pennsylvania distillers in the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s to the U.S. outlawing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of “intoxicating liquors” under Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s, American history shows that whiskey finds a way.
Nick Turse is the author of several books, including Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam
