The Story of how Julian Van Winkle III, the caretaker of the most coveted cult Kentucky Bourbon whiskey in the world, fought to protect his family\'s heritage and preserve the taste of his forebears, in a world where authenticity, like his product, is in very short supply.
But now, those old barrels were used up, and Julian Van Winkle faced the challenge of his lifetime: how to preserve the taste of Pappy, the taste of his family\'s heritage, in a new age? The a.
The result would immediately be hailed as the greatest whiskey in the world - and would soon be the hardest to find.
Now he could bottle a whiskey whose taste captured his family\'s legacy.
With no idea what they had, they offered to sell it to Julian, who scrambled to beg and borrow the funds.
Then something like a miracle happened: it turned out That hundreds of very special barrels of whiskey from the Van Winkle Family distillery had been saved by the multinational conglomerate That bought it.
But now the business had hit the wilderness years, and Julian could only hang on for dear life, stubbornly committed to preserving his namesake\'s legacy or going down with the ship.
There\'s always a certain amount of romance to the marketing of spirits, but Pappy\'s mission statement captured something real: We make Fine Bourbon - at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always Fine bourbon.
Julian\'s grandfather had presided over a magical kingdom of craft and connoisseurship, a genteel outfit whose Family ethos generated good will throughout Kentucky and far beyond.
He\'d just stepped in to try to save the business after his father had died, partly of heartbreak, having been forced to sell the old distillery in a brutal downturn in the market for whiskey.
Forty years ago, Julian would have laughed in astonishment if you\'d told him what lay ahead.
As Julian is the first to say, Things have gone completely nuts.
A bottle of the 23-year-old Pappy starts at $3000 on the internet.
He is swarmed wherever he goes, and people stand in long lines to get him to sign their bottles of Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve, the whiskey he created to honor his grandfather, the founder of the Family concern.
Julian Van Winkle, the third-generation head of his family\'s business, is now thought of as something like the Buddha of Bourbon - Booze Yoda, as Wright Thompson calls him.
As a journalist said of Pappy Van Winkle, You could call it bourbon, or you could call it a $5,000 bottle of liquified, barrel-aged unobtanium.
The Story of how Julian Van Winkle III, the caretaker of the most coveted cult Kentucky Bourbon whiskey in the world, fought to protect his family\'s heritage and preserve the taste of his forebears, in a world where authenticity, like his product, is in very short supply
