{"title":"Old Rip Van Winkle","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Van Winkle story begins in 1893, with a young travelling salesman crossing Kentucky by horse and buggy for the wholesaler W.L. Weller \u0026amp; Sons. Julian \"Pappy\" Van Winkle sold bourbon and a promise — of quality, of integrity, of a whiskey worth every penny. On Derby Day 1935 he opened the Stitzel-Weller Distillery with a quietly radical recipe: wheat in place of rye, for a bourbon smoother and softer than any then known.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePappy remained at work until his death in 1965, at ninety-one, and his standard passed down the family line — through his son Julian Jr., his grandson Julian III, and his great-grandson Preston, who joined in 2001. In the mid-1990s the family gave the oldest stocks Pappy's own name, and in 1996 the Family Reserve 20 Year received the highest rating ever awarded a whiskey by the Chicago Beverage Testing Institute. Since 2002 every Van Winkle whiskey has been made in partnership with the Buffalo Trace Distillery, to the family's original wheated mash bill, under the family's own guidelines.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe house is still governed by the words Pappy left it: \"We make fine bourbon at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always fine bourbon.\" Nothing is hurried, nothing is stretched, and each year there is only ever so much.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"old-rip-van-winkle-full-set","title":"Old Rip Van Winkle Full Set","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe range moves through the family’s whole register. Old Rip Van Winkle at ten years arrives near barrel proof, sweet with vanilla, pecan and cherry. The Special Reserve at twelve is the balanced one — honey, oak and soft tobacco at a medium proof. The Family Reserve Rye, thirteen years old, is among the oldest ryes bottled anywhere, dry with cocoa and white pepper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen the three that carry Pappy’s own name: fifteen years in deep-charred oak, all caramel corn and leather; twenty years worn with unusual style, sherried and dried-fruited; and twenty-three, the rarest of the family, deep amber and best taken neat. Julian Van Winkle was selling bourbon on a promise of quality from 1893 — these six bottles together are the whole of what that promise became.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Van Winkle","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49363223576715,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0755\/4102\/0811\/files\/pvw-family-cutout-2000_de82a5c7-5499-4b09-bc28-05e8d52a2d89.png?v=1789377747"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0755\/4102\/0811\/collections\/pvw-family.webp?v=1787919629","url":"https:\/\/sazeracprivate.com\/collections\/old-rip-van-winkle.oembed","provider":"Sazerac Private","version":"1.0","type":"link"}