The Beautiful Sadness Of The Yamazaki Distillery
by Carlos Bukowski Yamazaki Distillery. Osaka, Japan. The first thing they tell you is to be quiet. Not library quiet, but cathedral quiet. Like you’re about to witness something holy instead of just seeing how they turn grain into the kind of liquid that makes Japanese businessmen weep with gratitude. This was 1994. I’d been living in Shenzhen for over a year, running a small import business that was doing well enough to afford me trips like this one. Teaching English was behind me; now I was dealing with factories and shipping containers and the kind of money that let you take weekends in Japan to drink whisky that cost more than most people’s monthly salary. The tour group was exactly what you’d expect: American tourists who pronounced “whisky” like it had an ‘e’ in it, British expats who acted like the Japanese had stolen their birthright, a few Japanese whisky nerds, and one woman who caught my attention the moment I heard her laugh. Michelle. Vietnamese-French, living in Saigon, with mushroom-shaped hair and an angelic face that belonged on a Renaissance painting. She couldn’t have weighed more than 90 pounds, but there was something substantial about her presence, something that made the rest of the tour group fade into background noise. Our guide was a small man named Tanaka who spoke English with the kind of precision that made you aware of every lazy syllable you’d ever uttered. He wore a crisp white coat and the expression of someone who had dedicated his life to something greater than himself. “Yamazaki,” he said, “was founded in 1923 by Shinjiro Torii. He chose this location because of the water.” I was standing next to Michelle during this introduction, and when Tanaka started explaining the distillation process in rapid Japanese, I whispered a translation in Mandarin without thinking about it. She turned to me with this look of complete surprise. “Why you speak Chinese?!” she said, loud enough that several people turned around. “I live in Shenzhen,” I said, switching to English. “Business.” “But you’re…” she gestured vaguely at my obviously non-Asian face. “American. But I’ve been in China long enough to dream in Mandarin.” That broke the ice. During the tour, we ended up walking together, and somewhere around the fermentation room, I offered her one of my headphones. I’d been listening to The National’s new album, something moody and perfect for the contemplative atmosphere of the distillery. “About Today” was playing when she put the earbud in. She closed her eyes and listened for a moment, then looked at me with this expression I’d never seen before. Like she’d just realized something important about me, or maybe about herself. “This song,” she said quietly. “It’s…” “Sad and beautiful at the same time?” “Like whisky,” she said, and I knew I was in trouble. The tasting room was where things got serious. Not just the whisky – though that Yamazaki 12 was a revelation, fruit and spice and patience distilled into liquid form – but the way Michelle approached it. She didn’t just taste; she listened to what the whisky was telling her. “In Vietnam,” she said, holding her glass up to the light, “we have a saying about things that are beautiful and sad. They’re more real than things that are just one or the other.” By the time the tour ended, we’d made plans to have dinner. By the time dinner ended, we’d made plans to see each other again before our flights the next day. By midnight, we were sharing a hotel room and talking like we’d known each other for years instead of hours. I’d thought I knew what connection felt like. Mona had been magic, Melissa had been fire, but this was something else entirely. This was recognition. Like I’d been walking around with half a conversation in my head my whole life, and suddenly here was someone who knew the other half. We made love with the kind of intensity that comes from knowing time is limited. Not desperate intensity – gentle intensity. The kind that says this matters, this moment matters, you matter. When it was over, we lay there talking about everything and nothing until exhaustion finally took over. I woke up a few hours later to the sound of her voice. She was singing softly, something about closeness and distance and the space between wanting and having. Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it cut through me like the Yamazaki had – clean and precise and impossibly moving. “What song is that?” I asked. She turned to me, startled. “Just something… from earlier. From your music.” The National. She’d been carrying that song with her since the distillery, the same way I’d been carrying the taste of that whisky. Some things stick to you whether you want them to or not. We had breakfast together at the hotel, and then it was time for airports. Her flight to Saigon, mine back to Hong Kong and then the train to Shenzhen. We exchanged information, made promises about staying in touch, said all the things people say when they don’t want to admit something is ending. But walking away from her at Kansai Airport, I felt something I hadn’t felt since Mona left. That specific hollowness that comes from knowing you’ve just experienced something rare and might never experience it again. The Yamazaki I’d bought sat unopened in my apartment in Shenzhen for two weeks. When I finally opened it, I poured a proper glass and put on that National album and tried to recapture whatever had happened in that hotel room. But the whisky just tasted like whisky, expensive and well-made but no longer magical. Michelle and I wrote letters for a while. This was before email was reliable across borders, before you could stay connected without effort. The letters got shorter, less frequent, until they stopped altogether. Different countries, different lives, different timezones that made everything feel impossible. But
A Humble Plea from the Bottom Shelf (Pappy Van Winkle)
Listen, I’m not proud of this: I’ve spent the better part of forty years drinking everything from rotgut bourbon to French wine that doubles as home security, and I’ve never asked anyone for anything stronger than a recommendation. But here I am, hat in hand, asking you beautiful bastards for something I’ll never be able to afford this side of the grave. Pappy Van Winkle. There, I said it. The holy grail of bourbon. The unicorn. The bottle that costs more than most people’s cars and appears about as often as an honest politician. Now, before you start rolling your eyes and thinking this is just another broke writer trying to get free booze, hear me out. This isn’t about getting drunk. Hell, I can get drunk on a ten-dollar bottle of Kentucky Gentleman just fine, thank you very much. This is about understanding what all the fuss is about. See, I’ve built a career writing about the things that separate the haves from the have-nots. I’ve tasted $400 bottles of Blanton’s Gold and $300 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, usually through the generosity of rich friends or lucky finds in dead professors’ basements. But Pappy? Pappy is in a different stratosphere entirely. We’re talking about bourbon that sells for $2,000 to $5,000 a bottle, if you can even find it. The kind of money that could pay my rent for three months. The kind of money that separates “expensive hobby” from “mortgage the house and divorce the wife.” And that’s exactly why I need to try it. Because I write about value. About what things are actually worth versus what people pay for them. About the difference between price and meaning. And how the hell can I keep writing about the absurdity of luxury goods if I’ve never tasted the most absurd luxury of them all? I’m not asking for a whole bottle, Christ knows. A pour would do. Two fingers in a glass. Hell, a thimbleful would be enough to understand what fifteen years of aging and artificial scarcity tastes like. Just enough to know whether it’s actually transcendent or just another example of people paying ridiculous money for the privilege of saying they paid ridiculous money. Here’s what I’m offering in return: the most honest review you’ll ever read about Pappy Van Winkle. Not some flowery wine magazine bullshit about “notes of caramel and vanilla dancing on the palate like butterflies in a summer meadow.” I’m talking about a real review from someone who’s never tasted anything that costs more than a used motorcycle. I want to know: Does it actually taste like liquid gold, or does it just taste expensive? Can your tongue tell the difference between twenty-year aging and twenty-year marketing? Is it transcendent enough to justify the price, or is it just good bourbon in a bottle with a fancy name? I’ll tell you if it’s worth selling your grandmother’s jewelry for. I’ll tell you if it makes you understand God or just makes you understand why rich people are so insufferable. I’ll tell you if it tastes like freedom or just tastes like you’ve been financially dominated by a dead Kentucky farmer. The truth is, there’s something beautiful about wanting something you can’t have. It keeps you hungry. It keeps you honest. But there’s also something to be said for scratching that itch, just once, so you can move on with your life. I’m fifty-three years old. I’ve worked shit jobs, written decent books, and drunk more bourbon than any reasonable human should. But I’ve never tasted the bourbon that’s supposed to be the best bourbon ever made. And that bothers me more than it should. So here’s the deal: If you’ve got a bottle of Pappy gathering dust in your liquor cabinet because you’re too scared to open it, or if you work at a distillery and can spare a sample, or if you’re just a rich bastard who thinks it would be funny to watch a working-class writer try to describe liquid unicorn tears – I’m your guy. Send me anything from the Pappy Van Winkle family tree. Ten-year, fifteen-year, twenty-three-year – hell, I’ll take the Lot B if that’s all you’ve got. I promise to treat it with the respect it deserves and the skepticism it’s earned. And if it turns out to be worth every penny? I’ll say so. If it turns out to be the biggest scam since pet rocks? I’ll say that too. Because that’s what I do: I tell the truth about things, especially expensive things that most people will never get to judge for themselves. Plus, think about it: wouldn’t you rather see that bottle go to someone who’ll actually appreciate the experience, rather than some hedge fund manager who’s going to drink it out of a crystal tumbler while complaining about his stock options? I’m not asking for charity. I’m asking for the chance to complete my education in the absurd economics of American whiskey. To finally answer the question that keeps me up at night: Is Pappy Van Winkle actually worth it, or is it just the most successful marketing campaign in the history of bourbon? Help a brother out. Let me taste the dream so I can tell everyone else whether it’s worth waking up for. You can reach me at the usual places. I’ll be the guy at the end of the bar, drinking something that costs less than your lunch and wondering what the big deal is about. Carlos Bukowski writes about bourbon, bad decisions, and the vast gulf between rich and poor from his apartment in Hollywood. He has never owned anything worth four digits except his car, and that was an accident.