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Police offer $10,000 for Pappy Van Winkle heist information

Authorities investigating a heist of rare Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon are offering a US$10,000 reward for information that could help them catch the culprit.

Police are offering US$10,000 for information leading to the conviction of the culprit who stole US£26,000 of rare Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon from the Buffalo Trace Distillery in October

More than US$26,000 of 20-year-old Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon and 13-year-old Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye was lifted from Kentucky’s Buffalo Trace Distillery in October this year.

Distillery workers initially believed the 65-case theft to be an “inside job”. Drew Mayville, master blender at Buffalo Trace Distillery, told The Spirits Business shortly after the discovery of the theft: “The palettes had been hollowed out and so nobody noticed immediately. It looks like an inside job.”

The benefactors of the reward have not been fully listed by Kentucky’s Franklin County Police Department.

Police have been monitoring Craigslist, eBay and Bourbon blogs in their search for the missing spirit, while local press reports that more than 100 people have been interviewed in the case so far.

School principal Chris Pickett, who was named by police as a “person of interest” in their investigations into the heist, was cleared of any wrong-doing last week.

Pappy Van Winkle has been distilled and bottled at the Buffalo Trace Distillery, in Frankfort, Kentucky, since 2002 in partnership with the Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery.

A rare a coveted Bourbon, 20-year-old bottlings of Pappy Van Winkle retail for around US$130.

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