The Stitzel Distillery supplied much of the whiskey sold by the Weller wholesale firm. Stitzel Distillery in Louisville, Kentucky, which had started as a sour mash whiskey distillery in 1872. Fifteen years later, he and another Weller salesman bought the firm. began working as a salesman for the liquor wholesaler, W.L. In 1893, when he was 18 years old, Julian "Pappy" Van Winkle Sr. Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve is often regarded as one of the finest bourbons in the world, and its very low production and high demand can make it extremely difficult to find. It is distilled and bottled by the Sazerac Company at its Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve is the flagship brand of bourbon whiskey owned by the "Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery" company. We hope that you have the chance to try some of our fine whiskey for yourself.Not to be confused with Old Rip Van Winkle. We greatly appreciate all of our fans and your support. The only bottles of whiskey that don’t get distributed to bars, restaurants and liquor stores are the few we donate to charities and foundations. This merger spread knowledge of our brand way beyond Kentucky and into other major markets.įinally, we are making more whiskey each year, but it takes us 10 to 23 years to make that whiskey available to you. ![]() For that we are grateful.Īnother contributing factor was joining the Sazerac/Buffalo Trace family. That type of advertising is something we could never afford, but it has certainly contributed to our brand becoming a cult phenomenon. Even celebrity chefs have touted our whiskey as being their favorite. That led to receiving many awards from tasting competitions by beverage magazines both here and abroad. In the early nineties we received a very high rating from the Chicago Beverage Tasting Institute. When something is good, you naturally tell others about it. It’s difficult to put a finger on just one or two particular reasons, but here are a few things that have led to the popularity and scarcity of our whiskey.įirst, the whiskey is very good. We are frequently asked why our whiskey is so hard to find. Rather, I’ll leave you with a letter the Van Winkles put up on their website which, while not speaking directly to the pricing concerns, does give at least a flavor of how things have ended up playing out for this line of whiskeys as they have. ![]() We’ve written rather extensively in the past about the Van Winkle offerings and reasons why the overinflated pricing is as it is, so I won’t rehash that here. Take, for example, the Van Winkle 15 Year. You would think the biggest mark up would be among the older age statements, but in this case it looks to be this bottling at a rather staggering 1,413%!! Quite simply put, it is extremely outrageous. Now, as you can see, there are obviously super huge discrepancies between what the Van Winkles/Buffalo Trace (the distiller of these whiskies) price these bottlings at and what is being asked for them in the actual market. Keep in mind the latter, which plugs into pricing across hundreds of retailers, will fluxate a fair amount over time, so what you see below is representative of average pricing at the time this post was published. To thus give you a sense of the actual MSRP versus what these bottles are averaging in retail right now across this great land of ours, here are the data points observed (1) at the Van Winkle site and (2) Wine-Searcher.
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