It’s Pappy time

This year’s allocation of Pappy Van Winkle’s cult bourbon was recently released. There’s never enough supply to meet demand, which means two things: lines rivaling iPhone release day queues and high resale prices.

On Craigslist in NYC, bottles of Pappy are for sale for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. One seller is offering a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 23 Year for $1,250…that’s right around $80 for each 1.5 oz pour (without any markup).

Luckily, there are some close-but-not-quite alternatives. As this article on the bourbon family tree notes, the W.L. Weller 12 Year contains the same whiskey as Pappy 15 Year, but aged three fewer years. It can be readily found online for around $26 a bottle. To bump it perhaps a little closer to actual, Bourbonr has concocted what they call Poor Man’s Pappy:

Pick up a bottle of both W.L. Weller 12 (90 proof) and Old Weller Antique 107 (107 proof). They will cost around $20-$30 each. Start off with a 50:50 mixture of the two Bourbons. The easiest way to do this is with a digital scale. If you don’t have a scale just add a tablespoon from both Bourbons to your glass. With a 50:50 ratio you have a 98.5 proof delicious Bourbon.

Next, try a different ratio. Try mixing 60:40 Antique to 12. The Bourbon blend is now 100.2 proof and much closer in taste to the 107 proof Pappy 15.

Anyone else tried this? Thoughts?

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