by Wright Thompson You never know where you're gonna find the greatest bourbon on the planet. Like last month, I was on a cooking team at a barbecue contest, and one of the guys on it with me was a pretty famous chef. His name is Sean Brock, and his restaurant, Husk, in Charleston, S.C., only serves stuff grown, raised or made below the Mason-Dixon Line. He traffics in all the pharmaceutical-quality narcotics of the southern food junkies: Allan Benton's bacon, Will Harris' beef, and, of course, Julian Van Winkle's whiskey. So we were hanging by the bar at our tent, the day before the cooking began, and I was looking around at all the bourbon we had brought in. He grinned. "You like bourbon?" he asked.
Out came this bottle of Pappy Van Winkle, which is hard enough to get in the first place, but this was special edition stuff, bottled just for Husk, 20 years old and 107 proof. I've never seen a movie star naked, but it's got to be something like this.
"I think it's the best whiskey ever bottled," Brock says, as he handed me the fifth for a swig. "Goddamn. I love it. I love it too much."
If you know what Pappy Van Winkle is, you're already mad at me. If you don't, I'm about to change your life. Pappy, officially called Family Reserve, is the top-of-the-line bourbon made by The Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery. It comes in 15, 20, and 23 years old. There's a cult.
I actually met Julian once, in Kentucky. I was sorta shocked he didn't look like Yoda. I've bought out entire stores of Pappy. If I walk in a place, and they've got it, I'm walking out with it. As an experiment for this piece, I decided just now to call a few liquor stores, ask for Pappy, and then write down what each store said.
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