Rare Old Rip Van Winkle 25 Year and Private Tasting With Julian Van Winkle Up for Auction
One lucky winner will own a 1989 Old Rip Van Winkle 25 Year decanter and taste the entire current lineup with the legend himself
September 10, 2025 –––––– Sean Evans
Want to buy a bottle of Old Rip Van Winkle 25 year old? And then sit down and drink through the entire Van Winkle 10, 12, 15, 20, and 23 year range…with Julian Van Winkle III himself? Sazerac’s Legacy de Forge auction site is currently offering that very incredible bottle and experience for one lucky winner, with the lot open for bidding from today through September 24th, in honor of September’s Bourbon Heritage Month.
Old Rip Van Winkle 25 year old is the absolute apex of Van Winkle whiskey. Distilled in 1989 at Stitzel-Weller, the barrel spent a decade maturing there before moving to Buffalo Trace in 2002, when it bought the Van Winkle brand. In 2014, the barrel was dumped and transferred into stainless steel to keep the flavor profile balanced before being bottled in 2017. Of the 710 crystal decanters produced, the one on the auction block is number 706, which was in Buffalo Trace’s Distillery archives. It’s now available to be yours. At the time of publishing, the current bid stands at $15,000, but expect that to soar over the coming two weeks.
Especially considering the victor can bring three friends along to sit down with Van Winkle III for an opportunity to taste through the current Van Winkle portfolio. That quartet will be treated to innumerable stories from the good old days, as the legendary producer is quick with a quippy tale and his wry wit, much like his venerable whiskey, never disappoints.
Case in point: Over the weekend at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, Van Winkle was one of the key figures honored on a dais at Fred B. Noe’s Bardstown house, as part of the Bourbon Icons Dinner. There, Van Winkle told a captivated audience the story of how Pappy Van Winkle came to be.
“It was really all blind luck,” Van Winkle said. “As far as finding the picture [of Pappy with the cigar], that was in a file cabinet in the basement. I was throwing away tax returns from my grandfather [Pappy], who’d been dead 30 years, and I found this black and white picture of him smoking a cigar. I had some older whiskey, because everything wasn’t selling [back in 1994]. I got together with our label designer to see what we can come up with to honor my granddad.”
A short while later, Pappy Van Winkle the brand was created. “Don’t tell the [Louisville] Courier-Journal [newspaper],” Van Winkle grinned to the room. “They took that picture.”
“I put it out and it was baby steps. A case here, a case there. I sent a case to the Beverage Testing Institute in Chicago, and it won a 99 rating, the highest a whiskey had ever gotten anywhere, so that started the phone ringing,” Van Winkle recalls. “It was quite lucky. The main thing was it wouldn’t have worked if it was a bad product.”
“People ask me, ‘why is your whiskey so good?’ Well, I don’t know,” he said, to a large laugh. “I grew up tasting wheated bourbon. And it was from a really good distillery, and that’s what I wanted to recreate as close as I could. I like it. Then other people started liking it.” Demand for the Van Winkle lineup remains at an all-time high. Luckily, the 2025 release of the Van Winkle whiskey collection just released this month, too.
Other lots in the Legacy de Forge auction include an Eagle Rare 25 year bottle, a Stagg bourbon single barrel, a 2006 O.F.C. bottle, a Colonel E.H. Taylor Distiller’s Council bottle and more.
