Doesn't have to be recent release. He just asked me if i had any connections, and I don't really. But if anyone on here hasa bottle they're looking to get rid of, let me know.
Colorado friend looking for a bottle of Pappy this holiday season.
- Thread starter How Blue Can You Get?
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The aged Wellers are basically same as the younger Pappy's for a lot less money. In case you can't find the Pappy.
https://pursuitofpappy.com/wl-weller-12-yr-closest-bourbon-pappy-van-winkle-youll-find/
https://pursuitofpappy.com/wl-weller-12-yr-closest-bourbon-pappy-van-winkle-youll-find/
2 dead hookers, slightly decomposed. Final offer.
I tried the 10 year once when my brother got a bottle. I didn't think it was all that great.
I'll gank some from my dad if your friend will send me a big ole bag of Colorado's newest cash crop.
It depends on what you like.
Personally I'm not a big fan of proofed down whisky. If I want to drink a wheated bourbon like VW, I much prefer William Larue Weller and many of the 20+ year barrels from WFE.
Weller 12 is an acceptable substitute for Lot B at 1/4 of the price on secondary.
As to the OP's question, current secondary values are as follows;
Old Rip - $425
Lot B - $450
15 yr - $950
20 yr - $1200
23 yr - $1800
In some places those prices may be light. I have heard of 23 going for $2500 and 20for $1600. Once they allowed bars to buy aftermarket it opened up a new can of worms.
I have a drive thru liquor store right by my house that gets pappy in and they mark it up a lot. The 10 year is like, $200. But for that price, it’s not worth it unless you just want to have a bottle of pappy. Normally he has them for a while because with them being $70 for normal retail, no one really buys them for that price.
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WLW is infinitely better, IMO, than any of the Pappy offerings. George T Stagg is as well. The Four Roses Small Batch LE is usually better, for my palate, too, and some of their single barrel LEs have been better over the years than anything Pappy has released in ages.
To be fair, though, today's Pappy is different whiskey than what made PVW "famous" in the first place. There's no more whiskey coming out of Stitzel-Weller, and the new pappy barrels aren't aged there either. It's all Buffalo Trace these days (except the 23 year - which may contain some S-W juice still...not sure- which I thought was terrible from the start). Buffalo Trace is good whiskey, but it's not the "same" whiskey by any stretch. Very different flavor profile, and much less unique than the pappy was for a long time.
Ironically, when the Weller craze took off, people said it was the same stuff as Pappy but younger (or the non-choice barrels)...it wasn't...yet. The VW stuff was still a mix of S-W, Lawrenceburg, and others, while the Weller was all Buffalo Trace. Nowadays, it's the same mash from the same distillery as almost all the PVW. 5-6 years ago, it wasn't.
If you can get $2500/$1600, you can make as much money as you want to. They are readily available out there for $1800/$1200.
Great post Bill.
For me, the sweet spot right now is Four Roses store picks - barrel proof, high quality stuff at $60-$75 a bottle.
I go in streaks on the 4R private barrels. they're really good, but I overdo them at times and get a little tired of it. Right now, I'm kind of liking the Q recipes around 8-8.5 years old. That yeast doesn't do as well in older formats (I intensely dislike it past 10 years, for example), but around 8 years old, the potpourri notes in that yeast strain are just awesome. The other recipes seem to do fine out to 10 years or even longer.
Been on a Heaven Hill kick for about 5 months, but I'm running out of gas on that ,and 4R is probably where I'll be heading.
I tend to cycle around as well - although I always have multiple OESO and OESK picks in the cabinet. For about 6 months I was all in on Russel's Reserve picks - also a great option at $50 a throw.
That’s my favorite and always has been. One or two fingers while watching a UK basketball game is just about as close to perfect as this life gets.
Thanks for that info! So are you saying pappy isn’t what it used to be or it’s going back to what it used to be now? I got a bottle 10 year last year at a raffle and gonna keep it just because. But lots of people say it’s just not worth the hype. I said a while back, and I’m no bourbon connoisseur but it’s the only liquor I drink. I had four roses and thought personally it was better than most others I have. I have weller, eagle rare, and E.H. Taylor and the four roses to me taste better.
He’d have a better chance at getting a bottle of VW at some Denver stores like Argonaut or Applejacks than around here.
My go-to lately has been store picks of OWA. Good stuff. Also, working on a bottle of the 4R Al Young, great bottle.
My go-to lately has been store picks of OWA. Good stuff. Also, working on a bottle of the 4R Al Young, great bottle.
My apologies if I ramble a bit...
It's a completely different whiskey now than it was when it became "the next big thing." It was originally distilled at Stitzel-Weller in Louisville, that is now more or less defunct (Bulleit has a small experimental still there now). S-W was known for the wheated bourbons they made there. Pappy became popular when Julian van Winkle started selling their old stocks (that they literally couldn't sell before) and folks liked it. It was from that distillery.
But those stocks are not replaceable. The distillery that made them- including the water, yeast, and aging conditions- can't be replicated in a different distillery. Today's Van Winkle is produced by Buffalo Trace. Now, Buffalo Trace is one of the best distilleries out there, for my money, but it's still DIFFERENT. And the Van Winkle stuff made there tastes distinctly different than the van winkle stuff made at Stitzel-Weller in the 80s and 90s (EVERY distillery has its own profile). Plus, Buffalo Trace uses a higher barrel entry proof than was typically used at Stitzel-Weller. So while it has the same label, and might have the same wheat percentage, today's Pappy has no actual genetic kin to the stuff that made it famous. The Van Winkles ran through the last of those old stocks about 3 years ago.
Personally, I don't think american whiskey should be aged much past 12 years, occasionally 15 anyway. It's not like scotch- our barrels are new and newly charred, our weather has a lot more extreme heat and cold than scotland, etc. After about 8-12 years, bourbon tends to become too woody and it gets either a "rotting canoe" flavor or a "chewing on charcoal" flavor. Buffalo Trace sometimes avoids that in their brick-clad warehouses, but by and large, 20+ years is too long for an American Whiskey to age in Kentucky.
Even at its peak, Pappy 23 was honestly bad whiskey for my palate. The 20 was really good for a few years (actually, it was excellent through the early/mid 2000s), and the 15 year (at its higher proof) has always been good. The 12 was solid, and I've never particularly cared much for the ORVW 10 year (it's fine, just not exceptional).
It has secondary market value (a lot of it), so even if people don't love the flavor, they can still sell it (don't get me started on that).
All that being said- when it comes strictly to flavor, I will take George T. Stagg, William Larue Weller, and Four Roses Small Batch Limited edition over any Van Winkle/Pappy from any era.
For all the knowledgeable posters on this thread, much appreciated. Just gaining interest in this subject matter, so any info is appreciated.
We did a blind vert of SmBLE a few months ago;
Results (Best - Worst)
2012
2015
2013 (125th)
2009 (Mariage)
2010
2008 (Mariage)
2014
2016
2011
The 2015 can be had on secondary for around $275 - probably the best overall bang for buck in that whole line.
2011 WLW is my favorite bourbon, period. Wish I had several cases of it.
Indeed. Any one of the single-barrel releases at the Willett gift shop squashes the overpriced "Pappy" (and for the record, Pappy is only 15, 20 and 23 year...Old Rip Van Winkle is the younger 10 and 12-year).
Those WFE barrels are very hit or miss for me. Some of them are over oaked disasters. Some are excellent. Many are pretty mediocre. Depends a lot on the source. Drew has barrels from many different distilleries in his warehouses.
I tend to think the over-oaked ones are the 14-25 year old bombs. My favorites tend to be the 9-13 year. Even then, they are more impressive (to me) than any of the recent VW releases (except the VWFR rye - by far one of my favorites).
Agree on that - Lots of gems in that 9-13 year range. And I LOVE their MGP sourced ryes.
We differ on the VWFRR - although I really prefer barrel proof whisky, especially rye. We blinded SAOS 10 YR LE (original release,) Saz 18, WFE 25 yr rye, and VWFRR at an event last year, and the VWFRR came in 4th. We used it for old fashioneds the rest of the night.
I dug deep in my stash the other night with a buddy and we each had a sip of PVW 20 bottled in '04, then we had a sip of SW 12 year Old Fitz bottled in '64, it made the PVW taste like swill.
It's amazing how good that old SW stuff was.
Buddy of mine poured us a 1941/1947 Old Fitz recently. Had that awesome wet cardboard funk that only old SW has. Magic.
Agreed- That's the risk with sourced bourbon. One of the best bourbons I've ever had was barrel 2070, a 10 year private barrel from back in 2014 or 2015. Some of the most overpriced and terrible are spread throughout the WFE line as well, including an 8and 9 year old pair of wax tops I overpaid for. Definitely hit and miss. My main issue with WFE is that 90% of them come from Heaven Hill, and you pay roughly $10-12 per year (or more). So you're basically paying 3-4X the cost of Elijah Craig Barrel Proof to get a single barrel version of it. And ECBP ranges from "good" to "excellent."
Back when Willett had a wide selection of barrels from all sorts of different distilleries, Willett had some amazing barrels going out. There were a couple 11 year and a 13 year barrels in the last year or so that were excellent.
Excellent. I'd call the "best to worst" a relative term, as I've had all of these but 2008 and none were bad by any stretch.
