Join us on Thursday, February 25 at 7:00 pm EST as we continue our 2021 virtual season with Wright Thompson!

Wright Thompson is the New York Times bestselling author of The Cost of These Dreams and a senior writer for ESPN. He will be discussing his most recent book, instant #1 New York Times bestseller Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon and the Things That Last.

Barrel-aged for over 20 years and released in limited batches each fall, Pappy Van Winkle is the most sought-after Kentucky Bourbon whiskey in the world. Fans vie for a bottle each year online, seeking lottery tickets that offer a chance to purchase a bottle—which are typically priced north of$3,000. Julian Van Winkle III, the third-generation head of the family business, has been swarmed in recent years wherever he goes with people standing in lines for him to sign their bottles of Family Reserve, the whiskey he created to honor his grandfather Pappy Van Winkle, founder of the genteel craft bourbon. PAPPYLAND: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last is the first all-access account of the legendary Pappy Van Winkle brand, written by the beloved New York Times-bestselling author Wright Thompson. In PAPPYLAND, we find out why Pappy mania almost never happened. For years after Julian’s grandfather’s death, the business was on the brink of destruction while Julian stubbornly held on to his dream of preserving his namesake’s legacy. Then something like a miracle happened: Julian was able to buy back a few hundred rare, forgotten barrels from the old Van Winkle family distillery, bottling the whiskey whose taste captured his family’s heritage. The result would be the greatest whiskey in the world—and also the hardest to find. Now, the old barrels are used up, and Julian Van Winkle faces the challenge of his lifetime: how to preserve the taste of Pappy in a new age? In PAPPYLAND, the Pappy Van Winkle story has found its ideal chronicler in Wright Thompson. Known for his internet-breaking profile pieces at ESPN Magazine, which were collected last year in the instant bestseller The Cost of These Dreams, Wright is a master at jimmying the locks to the inner furnaces of the people he profiles, revealing the fuel that fires their ambition. With Julian by his side, Wright takes readers down the backroads of Kentucky horse country and into the distilleries that produce Pappy Van Winkle. The journey is an extraordinary testimony to the challenges of living up to a family legacy, of coming to terms with parents after they’re gone, and of reconciling a nostalgia for Southern heritage (a key ingredient in the appeal of Kentucky bourbon) with a history that can’t always be celebrated. Above all, PAPPYLAND is a book that celebrates the value of a product that requires exactly what we often feel so short on: time. You hardly need to be a bourbon aficionado to fall in love with the wild and wooly world of Kentucky whiskey. But if you do like whiskey, this book is nirvana.

Wright Thompson will be in conversation with Charlie Bradford, who has decades of experience as a supplier representative and distributor in the wine and spirits industry and has worked for WA Taylor, working with brands such as Maker's Mark and Buffalo Trace.

Order your copy of Pappyland from one of SBF's booksellers - simply click on a logo.  A limited amount of signed copies available!

Savannah Book Festival presents Wright Thompson