National overview
Restoring a Family Heritage and a World-Class Bourbon
Over the past ten years, the bourbon industry has experienced a boom that is unmatched in the rest of the beverage world. Collectors line up outside their local liquor stores hours before opening, just for the chance to buy an allotted bottle (I’m guilty). And Pappy Van Winkle – the 15 to 23-year-old bourbon with the face of Pappy himself – is the gold standard by which all others are judged. Bourbon has several immutable properties: it must be made in the United States (but it does not have to be made in Kentucky, though 95 percent of the world’s bourbon is made in the Bluegrass state); it must be 51 per cent maize; it must be aged in a new barrel with charred oak; and it cannot penetrate higher than 125 proof in the barrel. In Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last, Wright Thompson tells a story about bourbon that is often lost in the rage surrounding the industry. This is not really a book about the bourbon industry, although there is enough bourbon in it to satisfy your everyday connoisseur. But that’s not what makes it so gripping. Following in the footsteps of Julian P. Van Winkle III, president of the Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery, through his ancestral site in the glowing bluegrass hills of Central Kentucky, Wright tells the reader about the things that make bourbon special: family, friendships and history. Julian P. “Pappy” Van Winkle Sr. (our grandfather of Julian) began his career as a whiskey wholesaler for the WL Weller & Sons distillery. After the departure of WL Weller, Pappy and his colleague Alex Farnsley bought the company, and after the ban ended, the two merged with Arthur Stitzel’s distillery to create the Stitzel-Weller distillery, which opened on Derby Day in 1935. has. Pappy died in 1965. Pappy’s mantra was, “We make fine bourbon with a profit if we can, with a loss if we have to, but always fine bourbon.” That mantra was not passed on to the next generation. Julian Jr. and his sister split Pappy’s 51 percent stake in the Van Winkle distillery. As bourbon sales nationwide increased downward, the family, which owns a 49 percent stake, wanted to sell the company. They have Julian Jr. s sister convinced she wanted the same. Faced with a broken family stop Julian Jr. against the sale, and in 1972 the company (and all the heirlooms of the Van Winkle family) was bought by the conglomerate Norton Simon. Pappyland begins at the 2017 Kentucky Oaks, where Thompson watches Julian mingle with friends, family and fans at Churchill Downs. At this point, Thompson and Julian are all strangers. Over the next 200 pages, Thompson takes the reader on a journey through Kentucky and through time. He and Julian travel to the old distillery of the Van Winkle family – now owned by a conglomerate that makes Blade and Bow Bourbon – for a Derby Eve party. The two sneak away from the party to explore the historic site where Julian spent so much time as a child. There is a kind of melancholy. The heir to what is now the most popular bourbon on earth is, in a sense, a stranger in his own country. This is the case throughout the book, whether in the old Stitzel-Weller distillery, or at the old bottling plant in Lawrenceburg where Julian made his new attempt to revive Pappy’s bourbon. In the late 1980s, Diageo, the multinational beverage company that owned the old Stitzel-Weller distillery at the time, decided to sell some of the last barrels of bourbon distilled by Pappy for as little as $ 200 each. Julian bought as many barrels as he could afford and bottled one of the first 20-year-old bourbons in the world. He decided to pay tribute to his family and the old distillery: he named the bourbon ‘Van Winkle Family Reserve’ and put a photo of Pappy on the label. When Julian and Thompson arrive at the old bottle plant in Lawrenceburg, they meet the current owner of the plant, a man who used his ingenuity from the backwood to convert the storeroom of the old bottling factory into his home. The plant is a little worse for wear – not so different from what it looked like when Julian bottled bourbon in it his days. At the time, he says, the building “looked less like a place to make fine bourbon and more like a place where you could successfully hide a corpse.” Now it’s full of broken machinery and electronics (along with several insects that have taken up residence in the parts of the plant where the current owner – who describes Thompson as a hilly Robinson Crusoe – does not dare). Julian spent hard days in that holler and fixed things, so to speak, with chewing gum and rope while his children played on the field. But that holler is where Pappy Van Winkle rose from the ashes. The Van Winkles now produce their bourbon through the Buffalo Trace distillery, a huge facility located on the banks of the Kentucky River just outside downtown Frankfort. That bourbon is coveted worldwide. And as Thompson so artfully describes throughout the book, it was a combination of Julian’s hard work, faith, and dedication to the legacy of his family (not to mention a one-time palate!) That made Van Winkle’s bourbon brought back from the depths. Julian’s story came to mind. In 1876, my great-grandfather, HE Pogue, started a distillery in my hometown of Maysville, Ky. He, his son and his grandson operated the operation from 1876 until the ban finally rang the death knell of the distillery in 1935. had to sell to a conglomerate. My cousins Jack and HE Pogue IV, along with their children, nieces and nephews, revived the brand in 2005. In 2012, they established a distillery in Maysville, in the old family home, on a hill overlooking the shore. of the Ohio River, the same site where the original distillery once drained 50 barrels of whiskey a day. When Jack died in 2015, there was a wake-up call at the distillery; we roasted with the first bottle of bourbon to relive the name of the distillery. And in July 2019, the week before I took the bar exam, my brother Ben and I went to the distillery to bottle and pack the bourbon. All the work – from distillation to packaging – to this day is still done by the family. Although it is primarily a book about Julian’s way of reviving Van Winkle’s legacy and about the family relationships that shaped that effort, it is also a story of Thompson’s own reckoning with his family. Thompson describes how he grew up with an alcoholic father, that he chose not to become a lawyer like his father was, and his own struggle as a father. Like that of Julian, Thompson’s journey was shaped by his relationship with his father, and the next stage in the journey was to become a father himself. Thompson also realizes that there is a great deal of interest in contacting your home. Whether it’s an Italian restaurant in Clarksdale, Miss., The old Stitzel-Weller distillery, or the disused bottling plant outside Lawrenceburg, Thompson shows that places (and the memories associated with them) can have a profound effect on one’s life path. have. Thompson alternates back and forth between telling Julian and his own. Some find the transitions disturbing. I find it valuable to illustrate the parallels we share with Julian’s story in some ways. Thompson is a talented storyteller, that’s for sure. But for me, what makes Pappyland so great is his masterful prose. Anyone lucky enough to meander through the back roads outside Lexington should be able to close their eyes and describe the glowing blue-grass hills and thoroughbred farms Thompson describes. At one point, Thompson and Julian drive to the farm Elmendorf, on which the remains of the old mansion Green Hills stand. James Ben Ali Haggin, a wealthy lawyer and thoroughbred owner, built the mansion in the 1910s. All that remains today are ruins on a hill overlooking horse pastures. As Thompson artfully describes the scene: To the right I saw a white flash through the trees. Then it came to mind, like something on Marconi’s Tuscan hilltop, the strangest thing: four Corinthian columns and the wide marble and stone access stairs, the only part of Green Hills left. It was stranded here like Ozymandias, except that the sand stretched to oblivion, it was green Kentucky blue grass. If you are picking up this book in hopes of learning more about the intricacies of the bourbon industry or expecting an overview of the current range of Buffalo Trace Van Winkle products, you are likely to be disappointed. But if you want to see what makes bourbon (especially Pappy Van Winkle) special, you will be enchanted by the discussion of family, tradition, nostalgia and history. Towards the end of the book, Thompson offers one of his most memorable observations (and most important lessons): It’s important to know our past, everything beautiful, the ugly, and it’s important to appreciate and carry our families. memories with us, which often create the urge to polish, clean and erase. The competing interests – to look clearly at our home while also shaping our past in a suitcase for family identity – are at the heart of almost every part of Southern life. I will keep this lesson in mind next time I drink a glass of bourbon. I will have it the way the Van Winkles prefer it: with a twist of lemon.