Forget Pappy, These Five Whiskeys Deserve Their Own Cult Status

It didn’t used to be this way. Roughly 25 years ago, few people cared about Pappy van Winkle whiskey. Though the production out of the Buffalo Trace distillery in Frankfort, Ky., has always been small—around 7,000 cases per year—it was still relatively easy to find. Now its bottles are some of the most sought-after in the world.

In 1996, the Beverage Institute gave a 20-year-old bottle of Pappy a 99 out of 100, its highest score ever for a whiskey. In-demand chefs such as Sean Brock began declaring their obsession with the stuff. Anthony Bourdain even joked that he was getting a Pappy tattoo on his back. Now a bottle of the 23-year-old liquid can run to more than $3,000 on the gray market.