Page 61 - Bloomberg Businessweek July 2018

Van Winkle was attempting
to ride a surge of interest in
high-end bourbon starting
with Maker’s Mark in the early
1980s. The industry got a major
boost from Mad Men, which
Pappy Van Winkle was premiered in 2007 and lovingly
first released in the early featured brown spirits. By
1990s as a way for third- 2013, Pappy Van Winkle’s
generation distiller Julian signature 23-year-aged
Van Winkle III to get rid of bourbon was selling for
old bourbon that had been more than $100 a pour
sitting in barrels. He slapped in cocktail bars.
a picture of his grandfather
Julian “Pappy” Van Winkle
on the label and called
it “ultra-aged.” It’s been
produced by Buffalo Trace
since 2002.

MEANWHILE …
Curtsinger kept taking unwanted barrels
and soon developed a reputation for moving
stolen bourbon. Security was lax, he says, but
he concentrated on lower-end labels such as
Buffalo Trace and Ancient Age and ignored
the expensive stuff—mostly because he
assumed it would be more readily missed. When
news of
the Pappy
heist broke,
Some of his friends weren’t so cautious. Curtsinger and
Once a co-worker showed up drunk at his co-workers were
Curtsinger’s house in the middle of the surprised anyone
night with a few bottles of Pappy, asking would bother to call
for help unloading them. Another time, the cops—200 missing
he says, a co-worker looking for fast cash bottles simply wasn’t that much. He insists
to feed a drug habit brought him two full he’s not the mastermind, but he’s also
cases he agreed to sell. not an idiot—he leveraged buzz about 61
the theft to get top dollar for the
bottles of Pappy his friends
stole.

The barrels of whiskey in Curtsinger’s backyard —he says they were dumped there
by a friend—turned out to be from the Wild Turkey distillery, about 20 miles from
Frankfort. He and eight alleged accomplices were charged with bootlegging and
theft. Curtsinger faced the additional charge of engaging in organized crime, and on
June 1 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The buzz gave the Pappy
No one ever managed Van Winkle brand an almost
to pin the 200 bottles of mythic aura. Buffalo Trace has
Pappy on Curtsinger—his maintained total silence on the
sentence covered the theft. It refused to comment
barrels of Wild Turkey for this story or to make any
and a few other charges. of its employees available to be
Despite the publicity interviewed. Annual deliveries
generated by the Great of Pappy sell out almost
Pappy Van Winkle Heist, immediately, and bottles can be
there’s no evidence it ever found on the black market selling
occurred. in the high four figures.
THE END