Best known as an ESPN sportswriter, Wright Thompson has detoured from that beat for a reflective journey down some Southern byways to tell the story of prominent Kentucky distiller Julian P. Van Winkle III, and his quest to revive his family's iconic bourbon brand. In Thompson's capable hands, Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things that Last blossoms into a moving exploration of his own family history and of his search for life's meaning as he's about to become a father for the first time.
On Derby Day in 1935, Van Winkle's grandfather, nicknamed "Pappy," opened a distillery outside Louisville, where for the next 37 years the family produced an esteemed brand of bourbon. But the bourbon market collapsed in the 1960s, and Julian's father was forced to sell the plant. This ultimately forced the man Thompson calls "Booze Yoda" into a distilling limbo, where he'd reside for some two decades, until the fortuitous acquisition of aged barrels of Pappy's bourbon, and the explosive revival of demand for the whiskey, brought him back into the limelight.
Thompson is a sympathetic chronicler of the Van Winkle family saga, and of Julian's dogged quest to resurrect Pappy's brand. With him as an amiable guide, readers learn some of the secrets of high-quality bourbon, including what a "mash bill" is, why the process is "closer to farming than making steel, no matter how scientific the lab or industrial the plant," and why the key to the Van Winkle family brand is the use of wheat as a secondary ingredient. But above all, readers come to appreciate how a bottle of bourbon can be a "coded way for so many unspoken ideas to be transmitted and understood."
Julian's relationship with his father becomes the impetus for Thompson's revelation that his own father, a successful trial lawyer in Clarksdale, Miss., who died of cancer at age 58, was an alcoholic. Thompson confesses that "his unfulfilled potential has been my greatest fear and motivator." Inspired by Julian's lifelong quest and by the writings of Thomas Merton--who spent the last 27 years of his life in a Kentucky monastery--Thompson reflects eloquently on balancing his flourishing writing career with the impending demands of fatherhood.
Speaking of his devotion to his craft, Thompson quotes the advice of his writing mentor: "Be simple, blunt, and profound." He's taken that counsel to heart. Pappyland is as invigorating at the smell of freshly cut Kentucky bluegrass, and goes down as smoothly as a glass of Pappy's beloved bourbon. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: A sportswriter delivers a warmhearted story about fathers and sons and the pleasures of fine bourbon.