Celebrated bourbon maker Pappy Van Winkle is certainly no stranger to breaking sales records. But the prices its bottles fetched at a recent auction surprised even whiskey experts.
Food & Wine reports that over the weekend a bottle of 23-Year-Old Family Reserve by Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon was auctioned off at Sotheby’s. In the end, the rare bottle sold for a staggering $52,500 during a bidding war between two collectors. The sale price serves as a new record for a single bottle of Pappy Van Winkle.
According to Jonny Fowle, Sotheby’s head of whisky and spirits, North America and EMEA, the sale of the bottle, which was also accompanied by its original black velvet bag, went “far beyond anyone’s expectations.”
“Synonymous with enthusiasts, whiskeys bottled under the Van Winkle brand have gone on to become amongst the most highly rated and sought-after, gathering an almost cult-like following,” Sotheby’s said in a statement. “Many of those were distilled at the old Stitzel-Weller Distillery, opened on Derby Day in 1935, which went on to create some of the finest and most sought-after bourbons ever produced before its closure in the early 1990s, with production moving to the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort.”
The 23-Year-Old Family Reserve wasn’t the only star of the auction. It’s reported that all 14 of the bottles of Pappy Van Winkle sold for higher than estimated. In total, the beloved bourbon brand raked in nearly $400,000.
We’ll definitely toast to that.
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