Try to find a bottle of 12-year-old bourbon, just try. Now try to find it for under $30. Maybe Elijah Craig 12. Beam’s releasing one for $40, slim picking on others. Buffalo had one for $25-$30, but try and find it now. It’s not “officially” discontinued, but it may well be. In short allocation before, but now it’s usually dusty if you find one.

Buffalo Trace or Van Winkle said in an interview a few months ago they were going to greatly increase the Pappy 10 and 12 year in the fall of 2013. Since there is only one wheated bourbon there, and a 10 or 12 year can actually benefit from a faster maturation than, say, a slower aged 15, 20, or 23 Pappy, it’s much less “heavy lifting.” Very likely, the 10 year Pappy this year will go to $50-ish while the 12 year will be $70-ish. That’s two or three times what they would have gotten with a Weller name tag. Here’s how it works:

 A group in the warehouse identifies wheated that’s “ready.” They pull the barrels and they are checked to make sure they are real good. Then Van Winkle comes in, they take some photos, he sniffs 100-200 glasses (a glass from each barrel), presumably swishes and spits. Refuses a few barrels just because he can.

They then have to be rechecked by the Buffalo Trace tasting panel for real. They make sure that Van Winkle’s palate and olfactory nerve (nose/smell) — which most likely went dead on around glass number 30 — aren’t passing shit barrels through. They tap the magic wand and the formerly $28 Weller 12s are magically transformed into 12 Year Van Winkle for $70 and resold for $200. Yes, the ABV needs to be adjusted, with maybe a little blend tweaking.

By the way, I hear from my distillery spies that the Van Winkles are trying to figure out a good way to stretch the remaining Stitzel-Weller whiskeys into future bottlings as part of the blend. Parker’s Heritage Collection Golden Anniversary had at least one barrel from each of the 50 years Parker has been master distiller. That makes one barrel over 40 years old. So, if I tanked some Pappy 23 and put a bit in subsequent bottlings, I could say it had Stitzel-Weller in it right? Even one bottle or a bit of the last batch.

You heard it here first.