<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" FRANKFORT, Ky. \u2014 Franklin County Sheriff Pat Melton didn&amp;#039;t think much about it when he heard over the dispatch last Tuesday evening that one of his deputies was responding to a theft call at the Buffalo Trace Distillery. But the next morning when the local newspaper called, he got his first inkling that this wasn&amp;#039;t just any property crime \u2014 195 bottles of 20-year-old Pappy Van Winkle, only the most coveted and rare bourbon on the planet, had disappeared with a few odd bottles of 13-year-old rye, on its own a rare treat but in the shadow of the 20-year Pappy barely a step above paint thinner. In all, the retail value of the missing whiskey is listed on the police report as $26,025, but on the secondary market, the true value could be more than four times that much, given that the weekend before the news broke of the missing Pappy, a single bottle of the stuff sold at auction for $1,190.  As of now, no one is talking at the Buffalo Trace Distillery (the parent company for the Pappy Van Winkle brand); the Kentucky Distillers Association; or the local sheriff&amp;#039;s office, other than to say that detectives are pursuing the investigation as an inside job. After all, the ultra-lux Pappy was kept in a secure location behind a second locked door, and the missing cases were taken from the back of the pallets so that if one simply checked from the doorway, nothing seemed amiss. But there exists another possibility that it could have been an outside job, very outside. Back a few years ago, when Anthony Bourdain was still working for the Travel Channel, he did an episode of No Reservations in Kentucky. In one segment, Bourdain, in his trademark voiceover, refused to identify the brand of bourbon he was sipping, lest it become even more difficult to acquire than it already was. But anyone who knew anything could clearly see the Pappy 20 label on the bottle. So we reached out to Mr. Bourdain for comment, and this is what he gave us:    Of course we&amp;#039;re not accusing Bourdain of stealing a bunch of whiskey, but this does thicken the plot a bit. Eat Like a Man remains on the case and will bring you news from bourbon country as it matures. (Tweet is here, by the way.) Follow Eat Like a Man on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQFood. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/drinks/a25376/pappy-van-winkle-theft-bourdain-1013/>