The single coolest moment of writing a book on Pappy Van Winkle happened while sitting backstage at a Dead & Company concert on a beach in Mexico. (Yeah, yeah, I know it’s humble brag obnoxious, but now I can write off that trip, and the story actually is relevant to the topic at hand, I swear.) Derek Trucks, sitting in with Mickey Hart, came out of his dressing room and told me how much he loved the book, and as we sat around talking, I realized that the world’s best guitar player was actually a phenomenally educated bourbon geek.
We knew some of the same people in Kentucky, like professional woodworker (and amateur Elvis impersonator) Ed James and Ed’s father-in-law, Julian Van Winkle III. I think we talked for the first time then about how Derek was about to bring out his own bourbon line, Ass Pocket Whiskey, although my memory is a little, well, I was at a Dead show on a beach in Mexico where waitresses wandered the crowd with trays of free cold beers and free salty margaritas. I regret nothing. Lash the mast! Derek played perhaps the most magical music I’d ever heard that night, in a band with four world-class drummers, the late-night set that drew revelers out of the shadows and out of the surf to pack the lawn in front of the stage.
When Derek and I got home, we connected to talk about how I want to write a half deeply reported biography and half magical realism novel about the life and death of Col. Bruce Hampton, and of course, to talk some more about whiskey. He told me how much time he spends on off-days when touring the world with the Tedeschi Trucks Band rummaging around liquor stores looking for dusties. Once, he’d come to celebrate B.B. King’s famous Ebony Lounge in Mississippi, because B.B. played with Derek and believed him to be a member of the chosen tribe of true greats, and Derek ended up in some small-town Indianola liquor store just down from the juke joint. There he found an Old Fitzgerald, made in 1951 and bottled in 1963 by Pappy Van Winkle himself at the Stitzel-Weller Distillery. He bought it immediately and sent the bottle to Julian, figuring it should stay in the family. It’s a little like B.B.’s ghost had cosmically rewarded Derek for making this pilgrimage of respect.
“That was like finding a pack of ’52 Topps,” he said.
For a long time he’s done Buffalo Trace barrel picks with the Van Winkle family, and his time around Julian has given him a strong understanding of how great bourbons are selected and curated. Trucks had for years turned down offers to put out a whiskey. He didn’t want to just churn merch, not when he cares so deeply about the craft and history of the spirit. Then he got access to a small number of really special barrels. This became his first release of Ass Pocket Whiskey, which he selected with his brother David. People can only buy it in 200 milliliter bottles, so the (almost) half-pints fit perfectly in a boot or in the back pocket of a pair of Levi’s (or more likely Blue Delta) jeans. Hence the name. It’s designed to be opened not collected.
I asked what juice he’d found for the first release. The label calls it ten years old.
He laughed.
“I don’t think I’m able to say,” he said. “I’ll just say it’s stuff if I saw, I’d buy.”
That whiskey, sold at an affordable price, is already all gone, as is the second release, and the third (a dual release of a 9-year and a 15-year). APW just recently announced its fourth release, a two-pack of bottles of 10-year-old bourbon. Once that’s gone, all serious bourbon geeks can do is sign up for the email list and wait for Trucks to find another batch of barrels. He’s holding the line on the quality, so the next round remains just over the horizon as he travels the country with his road cases and amplifiers and his glass medicine bottle slides, always on the look for a little time machine whiskey, whether ten full barrels or just a lone bottle collecting dust on a forgotten shelf.
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