This State is Holding a Lottery for 1,208 Bottles of Rare Van Winkle Bourbon

If you’re a Pennsylvania resident and have always wanted to taste the greatly coveted Pappy Van Winkle bourbon, now is your opportunity.

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board is giving people the chance to buy 1,208 bottles of rare bourbon. The bottles comprise Pappy Van Winkle and other Van Winkle bourbon via a lottery system.

Drawings will be held to award the right to purchase the following individual bottles, via 6abc:

• Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve Straight Bourbon 23 Year Old 95 Proof, $399.99 each – 31 bottles for individual consumers, 10 bottles for licensees
• Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve Straight Bourbon 15 Year Old 107 Proof, $149.99 each – 59 bottles for individual consumers, 19 bottles for licensees
• Old Rip Van Winkle Handmade Straight Bourbon 10 Year Old 107 Proof, $89.99 each – 211 bottles for individual consumers, 70 bottles for licensees
• Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve Straight Bourbon 20 Year Old 90 Proof, $249.99 each – 70 bottles for individual consumers, 23 bottles for licensees
• Van Winkle Special Reserve Straight Bourbon 12 Year Old 90 Proof, $99.99 each – 537 bottles for individual consumers, 178 bottles for licensees

Those who wish to enter can do so at FWGS.com. The deadline for entry is 5 p.m. Friday. Participants may opt in to one, multiple or all drawings. Winners will be selected the week of February 7 and then notified.

Those prices may seem high for bottles of whiskey, but getting Van Winkle at retail price is a huge opportunity. A bottle of Van Winkle’s Family Reserve 15 Year Old — $149.99 retail in this lottery — recently sold for $15,000 at auction.

These bottles are so difficult to come by that they auction and illegally resell for exorbitant sums of money. In November, an undercover agent arrested a man who was selling a bottle of 12-year-old Van Winkle Bourbon.

Whiskey scams are a major issue, and Van Winkle-seekers are the biggest targets. Even empty bottles of Pappy are being snatched up for hundreds of dollars on websites such as Ebay by scammers. The scammers refill the bottles with cheap liquor and resell them for thousands.

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