Pappy Van Winkle - The Spirits Educator

Who was Pappy Van Winkle?

Julian Prentice “Pappy” Van Winkle Sr. was born in Danville, Kentucky, in 1874. William Larue Weller hired Pappy Van Winkle Sr. in 1893 as a traveling salesman for his company, William L. Weller & Sons. Weller’s company was a whiskey wholesaler, contracting with established distilleries to produce their brands. It was prevalent for wholesales to have their own whiskey brands, which they would market and sell. Van Winkle Sr. sold two top brands, W.L. Weller and Old Fitzgerald, by horse and buggy. He sold whiskey directly to taverns, saloons, and other retailers in Kentucky and Indiana. The W.L. Weller brand was owned by William L. Weller & Sons, but the original Stitzel Brothers Distillery produced the whiskey in Lousiville, Kentucky. The distillery was owned by the Stitzel Family members, who also owned the Old Fitzgerald Brand that Pappy sold.

William Larue Weller retired in 1896. In 1903, Pappy Van Winkle Sr. and his fellow salesman, Alex T. Farnsley, bought a controlling interest in William L. Weller & Sons. A few years later, he purchased a controlling interest in the Stitzel Distillery. Pappy Van Winkle Sr. operated both of these two businesses interdependently until the start of Prohibition in 1919. Once Prohibition began, Pappy Van Winkle Sr. dissolved the William L. Weller & Sons company since there was no longer a need to have a wholesale whiskey company during Prohibition.

The A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery was one of six distilleries during Prohibition that was permitted to operate with a medicinal whiskey license. Before Prohibition, there were two-hundred and eleven registered distilleries in Kentucky, and by the end, only six remained. When Prohibition ended in 1933, W.L. Weller and the A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery officially merged into one company. Together they built a new distillery called the Stitzel-Weller Distillery in Shively, Kentucky, which opened in May 1935 on Derby Day. Pappy Van Winkle, Sr. was 61 years old. They sold off the original A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery on Story Avenue to the Frankfort Distillery and focused all their energy on producing bourbon at their new distillery. The thirteen years of Prohibition had left the bourbon industry in ruins. There was a real bourbon shortage, and the remaining distilleries did not have any stocks of aged bourbon, because of the production limitations placed on distilleries.

Farnsley died in 1941, and Stitzel died in 1948, leaving the distillery entirely in control of Pappy Van Winkle Sr. The new Stitzel-Weller Distillery continued to produce wheated bourbon under the brands Old Weller, Old Fitzgerald, and Rebel Yell. In 1965, at the age of 91, Julian “Pappy” Van Winkle died, and the distillery's operation passed on to his son Julian Van Winkle Jr.