New Yorkers are wild for Pappy Van Winkle bourbon

At Park Avenue Liquor, the phone calls from people asking about it are a steady drumbeat: “It never stops,” says vice president Jonathan Goldstein.

It’s the same story at Astor Wines & Spirits, where workers once counted nearly 50 such calls in a single day. At the Whiskey Shop in Williamsburg, the barrage of people seeking it has gone from “crazy” to “just absurd,” says owner Jonathan Wingo.

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The “it” in question is the city’s, and maybe the world’s, most sought-after tipple — Pappy Van Winkle’s bourbon (usually referred to as Van Winkle). Bottled in small amounts by the Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery of Frankfort, Ky., it’s gone in recent years from a niche item favored by a cult of bourbon connoisseurs to an object of fervor, hunted by an ever-growing number of devotees the way Paris pursued Helen of Troy.

“People treat it like gold,” says Elizabeth Mitchell, the marketing manager at Southern Wine & Spirits, the wholesale distributor. “It’s created a huge frenzy.”

That frenzy peaks in the late fall, when the larger of two annual shipments from the family-owned bourbon maker goes out to stores. In New York City, the bottles have just arrived in shops, but don’t expect to saunter into your local liquor store and find one — they never make it to the shelf.

The fever runs especially hot right now, not only because insiders know about the timing of the late-2012 release but because it’s being hunted by holiday shoppers who have read about this elusive prize and are looking to put something special under the tree.

It falls to weary store owners to tell them, over and over, that they’re flat out of luck. Whatever bottles stores manage to get their hands on go to favored customers who’ve jockeyed their way to the top of waiting lists (or in some cases to the winners of lotteries).

Other stores don’t even bother with a list: Paul Bressler, the spirits buyer at 67 Wine and Spirits on the Upper West Side, used to keep one, but it led to too much frustration, he says.

“You’d have 50 people on a waiting list, then 10 bottles come in, and you have 40 unhappy people,” says Bressler. “Everybody wants it, and nobody will accept the fact that they’re not going to get it.”

Nobody knows that better than Catherine Jones of Long Island City, who hoped to land a bottle for her boyfriend’s 29th birthday. She started researching back in February, made the list at Astor in August, then was told last week it wasn’t going to happen.
“I was very disappointed when I found out that the chances were essentially zero,” she says.