Julian P. Van Winkle Sr. lived from 1874 to 1965 and spent essentially all of his adult life in the whiskey trade. He began in 1893, at eighteen, as a travelling salesman for W.L. Weller & Sons, selling by horse and buggy to saloons and retailers across the Midwest.
The wheated mash bill
Bourbon must be at least 51% corn. The remainder — the flavouring grain — is conventionally rye, which brings pepper, spice and a firm, dry structure. The Weller house did it differently, replacing the rye with wheat.
Wheat is a softer flavouring grain. It gives a rounder, sweeter, gentler bourbon with none of rye's sharp edge, and it behaves unusually well over long maturation: where a high-rye bourbon can turn tannic and bitter with extended time in wood, a wheated one tends to stay integrated and grow richer. That property is the whole reason very old wheated bourbon is prized, and Van Winkle backed the style throughout his career.
Stitzel-Weller
In 1908 Van Winkle and a fellow Weller salesman, Alex Farnsley, bought the wholesale house. They later acquired the A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery, established 1872, and the merged company became Stitzel-Weller. It opened on Derby Day — 5 May — 1935, in Shively, Kentucky, shortly after the repeal of Prohibition, and Van Winkle ran it until his death at 91.
The motto
The line most associated with him is a statement of priorities:
"We make fine bourbon. At a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always fine bourbon."
It is genuine family record — it gives Sally Van Winkle Campbell's family history of the distillery, But Always Fine Bourbon, its title. The frequently repeated staging, that it hung on a sign at the distillery doors, is not corroborated by the distillery's own published history, so it is best treated as his motto rather than as a documented fixture.
The afterlife of a name
The Stitzel-Weller plant stopped distilling in 1992, and the bourbons carrying the Van Winkle name are now produced at Buffalo Trace. Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve, released at 15, 20 and 23 years, has become the most chased allocation in American whiskey, with secondary prices bearing no relationship to its shelf price.
The irony is worth noting: a man whose stated position was that quality came before profit now lends his name to the most speculative object in the category.