IN DECEMBER 2022, a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 23-Year-Old Family Reserve sold at auction for $52,500—more than the list price for a base-model Tesla. The long-aged bourbon from the Buffalo Trace Distillery is arguably the most sought-after bottle of American whiskey in production today.
Pappy Van Winkle commands high prices on the post-retail market partly because it’s so rare: About 84,000 bottles are released each year. By comparison, Jim Beam, a much more affordable and accessible brand, ships about 84 million bottles a year. The scarcity of Pappy Van Winkle helps explain the furor over the recent revelation that senior officials at the Oregon
