403: Dusty Booze Hunting with Aaron Goldfarb

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0:32Spirits don't change their bottled history, their liquid time capsules. So it's very exciting to taste something from the past. There's really not many things you can have from the past like that. You can't see what oranges tasted like in the 70s.

0:51this is taste i'm your host matt rodbard

0:59aaron goldfarb has been a journalist for over a decade frequently writing on the subject of cocktails and drinking culture for such publications at the new york times playboy and taste his latest book dusty booze in search of vintage spirits digs into our ongoing obsession with old spirits and the people who chase them. On this episode, we talk about the real bourbon grails and the fake ones, and if there is any remaining Stitzo-Weller juice to be drunk in this country. I did not think there was, but he has a great response. It's so fun catching up with Aaron and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:45Aaron Goldfarb welcome to This is Taste what's up buddy? What's up man? It's good to see you I've known you for a long time we've like when I was editing at Punch I edited some of your stories there and you've written for Taste we're gonna get to your story about the George Foreman grill which is a fan favorite. Thank you. But we're just shut up, Mike. I want to make this official. You lost out in the audition for your audiobook. You literally tried out to read your own book and you didn't quite make the cut. What happened? Yeah. So they were getting ready to do my audiobook and they said, there's a lot of first person perspective in this book.

2:20So it'd be good if you potentially read it. You're obviously not a pro. So record a little audition and send it in and we'll make a decision. you want to get picked because you make like an extra 5 ,000 bucks if that happens. Of course, you also sit in a studio for three straight days talking, which for a freelance writer who lives, you know, with a cat all day, that's a lot. You're like more of an iMac guy, not a microphone guy. That's a lot of talking. Sent it in. I thought I did a pretty good job. And, you know, I got the, we've decided to go another direction. Okay. Fair enough. I mean, there'll be other books, but the book we're talking about, Dusty Booze.

3:01Listen, bro, this is such a great book. I'm a huge fan of your writing and working with you. It has always been a pleasure. What I like about this book is there's a lot of first person, as you mentioned. You've really got voice, but you've also got the chops to write about spirits. You write about craft beer, but mostly you write about spirits. And I just enjoy the journey. So we're going to get into Dusty Booze. And I feel like I want to get a sense from the jump about your own personal experience hunting for ultra ultra vintage bottles of bourbon chartreuse campari yellow chartreuse green chartreuse all that shit what what is it like for you to hunt for dusty booze you know i've never been as like huge and earnest of hunter as the people detailed in this i i first learned about the practice of looking for vintage spirits uh around 2013 and I said to myself, oh, every liquor store is probably cleared out by now.

3:58You know, in the late aughts, early 2010s, this first kind of group of dusty hunters started going to out-of-the-way liquor stores, rural liquor stores, liquor stores in quote-unquote bad parts of town, and finding bottles from the 80s, 70s, 60s that had just sat on the shelf for 50 years and never been purchased for whatever reason. So I never was one of those people who printed out a giant Google Map or MapQuest place to place and went around any town looking. But if I saw an estate sale, if I saw an out-of-the-way liquor store in a weird town, I would go in and by then I knew the things to look for to determine why an old granddad was from the 70s and not from 2015 or whatever.

4:48In Europe, I've had a decent amount of luck because at least until recently, they didn't really care about vintage spirits as much as we do here. They didn't have as many dorks obsessed with going around and clearing out liquor stores as much as we had here. And so, you know, I found a lot of vintage Amaro in Rome a few years back. Oh, cool. And I mean, let's zoom out a little and just like set the table a bit about what this all means. and I think we can start with bourbon. You really focus on Kentucky bourbon and American whiskey as well in the first half of the book. But I want to build this kind of narrative and for our audience, this is really interesting.

5:31If you drink, if you don't drink, this is history. We're talking about liquid that was produced 50 years ago, 60 years ago, even 30 years ago, even 10 years ago and it's limited. We drink it, it's done. And I think you have kind of articulated this well, but what is it that's so interesting about vintage bourbon? Well, I think a lot of people know with wine, it ages in the bottle. It doesn't always age better, but in a lot of cases, it does. So if you have an old bottle, it's turned into something else. Spirits don't change. They're bottled history. They're liquid time capsules. So to open a 1960s gin is to be able to make a martini like Don Draper might have had it.

6:22If he was a real person, obviously. So it's very exciting to taste something from the past. There's really not many things you can have from the past like that. You can't see what oranges tasted like in the 70s, you know. Bourbon is just what people are most obsessed with in the spirits world. So it only made sense that vintage bourbon was the first category people started to pursue. A lot of the great distilleries from the past no longer exist. So to taste, you know, a Weller from 1960s was to taste something from a distillery called Stitzel Weller that hasn't been open since 1992. To taste Old Grandad from the 70s was to taste it from a distillery called National Distillers, which no longer exists.

7:12you know to taste wild turkey from the 80s was to taste a bourbon made under different kind of production practices than wild turkeys made today and you know maybe you'll like it better a lot of people do myself included but it's going to be different that's interesting and i think it's so key to point out again these are not getting quote-unquote better with time these aren't like their bottle aging is kind of a myth but we're talking about a production and a practice at a time when industrialization was maybe a little different. Obviously, water quality was different. So can you say that like, we'll say like the Stitzelweller juice, and we've talked about alcohol produced at this mythical Stitzelweller.

7:50Kentucky is where bourbon is made. It's exclusive to that is the law. So we're talking about a very limited amount of geography where bourbon is made. And the Stitzelweller distillery is so mythic. But like, is it like the Stitzelweller juice? Is it like better? You know, I think a lot of people would say it is. And I happen to kind of think it is as well. Why it's better, you know, what occurred to make it better than anything today is certainly up for debate. In other spirits categories, that's not necessarily up for debate. We can say, you know, old tequila was made with more mature agave than they're using today.

8:27But with bourbon, there's lots of factors is, you know, was the corn of a better quality than the kind of mass produced government funded corn today? You know, were the oak barrels of a better quality back then? You know, they say they were made out of trees, oak trees that were 170 years old. Today, oak barrels are apparently made from trees that are about 80 years old. Was the fermentation different? Wild turkey used to ferment and open cedar tanks. You have to wonder if a sort of microflora got into the walls of those tanks and kind of affected the signature flavor of 80s wild turkey. Nowadays, everything's stainless steel, computer operated, virtually impossible to screw up.

9:09It's flawlessly made. It's always good, but I'm not sure it's as interesting as stuff from the past. There's a little bit of defects, a little bit of those variants, the variables that make something extraordinary versus just plain good. Let's talk about Pepe Van Winkle, Sitzel Weller's most famous production and I feel like there was a moment when I started writing about spirits and cocktails in I'd say around 2005 and I'm sure it goes way back but like Pepe Van Winkle obviously we all know what that is it had a moment what does Pepe Van Winkle mean to this whole narrative? Well it depends if you're talking about the man or the brand.

9:48We're talking about the guy with the cigar on the label Okay that's Pepe Van Winkle Sr Julian Van Winkle senior called Pappy. He was a bourbon salesman who opened the Stitzelweller distillery in 1935 on Kentucky Derby Day. He was kind of a salesman par excellence in an era before people were kind of trying to hype up bourbon. So in a way, it's only fitting the most hyped up bourbon of this era is named after him. He made a weeded bourbon, which was unusual for the era. if you didn't know all bourbon has to be at least 51 percent corn but then distilleries typically choose a second grain to add flavor and complexity Kentucky right it doesn't have to be made in Kentucky actually just the U.S.

10:38just the U.S. okay yeah he chose wheat which was very unusual adds a kind of sweeter more caramelly note a more perhaps palatable or approachable bourbon. And when it's well aged, with a little bit of proof, it's quite delicious. All right. I mean, I feel like the actual juice, the alcohol that's in the bottle around this period in 2005 became coveted. Is there like a moment in maybe media history where Pappy Van Winkle, with the number on the bottle, like 21, right? Is 21? There's a 15, 20, and 23. Right. 23 is the one. I knew there's an odd number. So like 23 became like, and as part of your narrative of Dusty Hunting, when 23 became this kind of very collectible whiskey.

11:30Yeah. Well, so, you know, Julian Van Winkle Sr. dies in, I think, the 60s, but Stitzelweller makes it to 1992. 1992 plus 23 years old, that brings Stitzelweller liquid all the way to 2015. so Pappy Van Winkle bottles up to 2015 were Stitzelweller liquid today they're not and that kind of became a demarcation point for you know when it went from absolutely spectacular to just very good I guess but yeah I think it's I usually place it around 2010 when the you know Cognoscenti really starts becoming obsessed with Pappy around then Bourdain starts drinking it. Sean Brock. Sean Brock. Yeah. Yeah. Great chef in Charleston and Nashville, you know, started famously collecting, you know, bourbon and using eBay.

12:24I know you write about that, about using online forums to buy bourbon and whiskeys. Yeah. He became one of the premier, if not the premier collector of old Stitzelweller bourbons from the entire era. I think in an episode of Bourdain's show, he famously carried around an unlabeled jug of it all night through Charleston as him and Bourdain hit the Waffle House and whatnot. That kind of supercharged it into the mainstream of it. That's when every liquor store, I'm sure we'll tell you, they were getting all the phone calls asking if they had it. No, of course they didn't. Yeah, the word allocation came into our lexicon.

13:05Everyone's talking about allocations. My friend literally went to that that that liquor store in in red hook that had allocation yeah linnell's no no i'm talking about no linnell's is amazing we go for another conversation no there's maybe it's more like uh it's like right by the the ninth street uh subway station there was a big okay yeah i know like in like a like near like uh i would call it a a staples and there's a big liquor store and they had like allocation back in 2005 anyways this is my friend's story with happy, but everyone had their like secret allocation spots, right? Yeah. Those I think have mostly dried up.

13:40Um, there's just too many people that want it. I mean, I think if you've been a good customer of it for many years, maybe your liquor store will throw you a favor, but, uh, you know, the almighty dollar usually dictates the charge as much as they can. Of course. Now I want to, to talk about, we talk about bourbon and whiskeys, um, in like this coveted sense this there's a high demand um around 20 2000 and 2001 but this wasn't always the case going back just a few years 1987 jim beam pays 545 million dollars to national stillers to acquire a peach schnapps company because the fuzzy navel was like the ninth most popular cocktail at the time which is amazing you write about it very colorfully but like kind of thrown into the deal is old granddad old taylor old crow and rye old overhaul and they're thrown into this deal so this is my question is back in the 80s bourbon and whiskey was like not it's not exciting not cool not what people were drinking yeah i mean that that's still one of the most amazing deals to me it's like trading for so and so and tossed in on the deal also is you know Kevin Durant and whatnot.

14:59Yeah. I mean, if you've seen cocktail, this is what people are drinking. They weren't drinking bourbon, you know, from Tom Cruise's... Fine film from 1988. Fine film, yeah. Yeah, they were drinking these sweet spirits. They were drinking clear spirits like vodka, unaged tequila, maybe a little gin, maybe, you know, Bacardi, and then a lot of sweet stuff like schnapps. Sex on the Beach was huge. Fuzzy Navels, you mentioned, and then a lot of cocktails with unsavory names. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Very, very canceled cocktails. Right, exactly. Extremely canceled. But I mean, yeah, no one was drinking Old Grandad.

15:38No one was drinking Old Crow. Certainly no one was drinking Old Overholt, a rye. No one even knew what rye was. From Pennsylvania, of all places, right? Right, exactly. Sorry, Clayton, about that. Yeah, love Pennsylvania. So, yeah, I was kind of tossed in on a deal. And, you know, I don't know what exec pulled that off, but he ended up making an incredible score of incredible bourbons and ryes that are massive today. Yeah. So later on, you know, all of these these distilleries would become truly the dusty bottles that you're hunting for upwards of five thousand dollars a bottle. Is this the glut era?

16:17Is that what you're referring to? Or is that a different era? Because you refer to the glut era. And I think that's an interesting phrasing. Like, what is the glut era? Yeah, and that's not a term I coined. That's standard industry parlance. I think it's around 1970, the bourbon industry for the first time in decades, since Prohibition, I think, in fact, starts having sales going downhill. Kids of the 70s start to see bourbon as kind of an old man's drink. Um, and so from 1970, all the way up to, I think 1999, every single year, bourbon sales go down year after year after year. And at a certain point you start going, well, why the hell are they still making so much bourbon if no one's buying it?

16:59And I asked, um, Eddie Russell, who's, uh, the master distiller of wild Turkey. Why were you continuing to make millions of bottles of bourbon a year if no one was buying it? And, you know, he kind of said to make bourbon, And you have to have faith in the future because if you're selling a product that is going to be sold at 12 years of age, 15 years of age, you know, with Pappy, we said 23 years of age. You can't think about the current consumer. You have to think about the future consumer. And these Kentucky bourbon men were certain that, you know, 5, 10, 30 years from now, people are again going to be buying bourbon.

17:37They were very close to putting themselves out of business, but this gambit has eventually paid off. Yeah. Those 30 years were not very good years for the industry. Very dark years. Years when, as you said, peach schnapps was what everyone was drinking and they were very uncool in Kentucky. But they got through with a few kind of gimmicks through this era. I mean, like Four Roses, I hear the story back in like the 80s and 90s, like they weren't like they were like they were producing it in Kentucky, but it was like below. It was like they couldn't sell Four Roses. Like it was so. They weren't even they got to a point where they quit making straight bourbon.

18:21Straight bourbon is, you know, as we said, you know, distilled corn, essentially barreled in oak barrels. they started making a blended whiskey which was bourbon mixed with essentially just grain alcohol pretty disgusting so this once venerable brand was just selling absolute junk so uninformed dusty hunters have found a old four roses bottle and thought wow i found a great score and it's you know absolutely gross stuff but you know four roses eventually got back on track thanks to the Japanese market. Yeah, that's exactly what I was curious about, how there was a level of just cutting corners and making shit, and bourbon just didn't have demand.

19:02And let's segue into Japan. It's an important place in bourbon history. The Beam Centauri deal went down, and Fred Noe, you got to give him some credit and his family for making that happen. I've got to spend some time with Fred a few times, and I enjoy his company and hearing about the family history. But how does Japan's thirst for whiskey and bourbon kind of drive America back into the game? Yeah. So from what I understand and from what I've talked to people, in the 80s, Japan had a real thirst for kind of classic Americana, whether it was an Americana that actually really existed here or was kind of just seen on TV.

19:46You know, they loved Levi's and Coca-Cola and cheeseburgers and bourbon. So it became a lifeline to Kentucky distillers who couldn't sell anything here. In fact, it became better than a lifeline because here they were selling, you know, very standard bourbon. And the Japanese crowds asked for elevated luxury bourbon. Can you bottle 15-year-old bourbon? Can you bottle 20-year-old bourbon? The Kentucky distillers said, well, that's ridiculous. Bourbon is not palatable at that many years of age. Wow. Amazing. It would taste like oak. Yes, right. Right. And but whatever, if you want to buy this 20 year old barrel that I can't give away in America, I am glad to sell it to you.

20:29So by then we have Julian Van Winkle, the third Pappy's grandson, who now owns the company, his father and his grandfather are dead, and he's doing anything he can to move barrels of whiskey. He's got a lot of Stitzelweller stock, and he starts traveling to Japan and selling them barrels. Blanton's famously starts in Japan. They're looking for a luxury product, a kind of American version of single malt.

21:04The producers of Blanton's Ancient Age was the name at the time, Buffalo Traces now, came to them. What if we give you a single barrel bourbon? And each bottle is individually comes from a single barrel of bourbon. Right. Which is common in parlance now for bourbon used very well and famously by plenty of producers. But this was not known. This was not thought about. This wasn't there was no like numbers on barrels and single barrel bourbon. Yeah. Yeah. It exactly. It came in the same kind of luxury bottle we see today with the horse topper. This was not something the American bourbon market had ever seen.

21:39And this was kind of the start of finally getting out of the glut. But finally, American distilleries started going, wow, these Japanese drinkers like Four Roses as bourbon, not blended bourbon. These Japanese drinkers like this Blanton's, which I think sold for about$90 U.S. at the time over there, an outrageous number. These Japanese drinkers like this 20-year-old Stitzel Weller, which must have given Julian Van Winkle the idea, oh, maybe I can rename it Pappy Van Winkle and start selling it in America. And Japan really helped give ideas to American distillers, which would eventually turn around the market in America.

22:18So interesting, Japan. And I have a follow-up question about Japan. But as an aside, it's really interesting about the Japanese custom of drinking bourbon, which is like highball with water. So it's not even the way we think about drinking antique spirits, which is neat and slowly. Does that affect the way that Japan has a thirst for bourbon, the way it's served? Well, I've also been told in the 80s, there was not a lot of drinking done at home. People didn't get a bottle at the liquor store and take it home. They'd kind of like bottle service is known in America, but these weren't clubs. These were, you know, kind of just whiskey bars.

22:56You'd buy a whole bottle of Blantons for your crew and go through it out the night. You know, maybe some people drank a knee. Maybe some people had it on ice. Maybe some people had it as a highball, as you said. I think the distillers in America were happy that you drank it anyway. Yeah, totally. If you want to mix it with Coke, that's fine too. But yeah, that really gave a lifeline to America. Now, the Beam-Sentori merger or Centori acquiring Beam happens in 2014. So there's a real, there's some economics at play where Japan is investing heavily in American production. At the same time, Japan is starting to have its own domestic bourbon and whiskey scene where brands like Yamazaki are starting to enter the fray.

23:42And I recall Japanese whiskey being, while bourbon from like Stetzelweller was coveted, you know, Japanese whiskey was almost like frowned upon around the 2014, 2013 era. And you couldn't, you know, give away some of these spirits. It's a Yamazaki 12. You could buy or 10 or whatever it may be you could like find in stores and fast forward to 2024 and you can't find a Japanese whiskey with a number on it. It's very difficult. Yeah. You know, the American whiskey collector, if not the world whiskey collector, is always looking for the next thing. So, you know, who knows what the next next thing will be.

24:19But you're right around that era, these Japanese whiskeys, most notably Yamazaki, which is produced by Suntory, started getting accolades, winning kind of awards. Famously, I can't remember what year it was. A Yamazaki was named Whiskey of the Year by by Jim Murray, who's a since canceled producer of whiskey reviews. That really lit a fire. It got a lot of viral articles. And then all of a sudden, you know, you could find Yamazaki 12 went from something you could find anywhere to impossible to find. And Yamazaki 18 catapulted to like$500 a bottle. You know, same thing. Which is like, is that today or is it even more today?

25:01Yamazaki, if you can even find it. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to even market price these things because you just don't even see them. Maybe a 12. I can't recall the last time I saw an 18. they released a 55 Yamazaki 55 year old two years ago which I think sold for about a million dollars on auction yeah it's amazing to see the Japanese market I remember going to a launch lunch for Yamazaki 10 or Yamazaki 12 and it like they were giving away bottles obviously I remember someone smart in the room said at that time and I remember it was like a weird like it was like John George it was like seeing Yamazaki and John George because there is always an interesting dynamic but they were like if you can find Japanese whiskey with a number on it.

25:43It doesn't matter what it is, buy every bottle you can find. You probably would have been a safe bet back then. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And Japanese whiskey famously had only existed as blends till I think about 1985 when they started releasing a 12-year-old. So there wasn't a lot of stock in the back to go into. And the blended Japanese whiskey fit very well with their high ball culture. This new single malt culture of the last 40 years has really elevated the profile of Japanese whiskey outside of just a local sensation to a world sensation. Back to dusty hunting. Can you still find bottles now?

26:20Like today, 2024, can you like go and find on a shelf something that has value? Well, maybe not bourbon, but perhaps something because what people covet is always changing. You know, three years ago, you could have said, I'm done looking for bourbon. And maybe I'll go look for old chartreuse, perhaps find that. People now are perhaps looking for old tequilas, obscure Amaro. So there's always something that's kind of going up in value. And then five years from now, we go, damn, why didn't I just start looking for chartreuse in 2018 or whatever? So there's always something. The liquor stores are mostly picked through throughout at least America.

27:07So you got to start being a little more creative. Where would you start if you're like in a city that you hadn't been to? Let's make up a city. Let's say Topeka, Kansas. I'm saying the center of the country, not too far from Kentucky. Where are you looking for vintage spirits and dusty bottles? You know, it's kind of one of those things where you're road tripping and you pass and you're like, that is a weird place for a liquor store. We should pull over. If it ever gives you a little unease or like, yeah, this place actually open that might work. estate sales have become a big thing. There's always some old person dying that no one knew had a ton of bottles in their attic or basement.