The Bourbon Brand Anthony Bourdain Swore By

If chef, writer, and TV host Anthony Bourdain didn't like something, he let you know about it. He professed his hatred of brunch to NPR. He railed at certain fast food chains' "pre-cooked frozen cardboard" burgers to SBNation. He ranted against pumpkin spice, juice cleanses, and the overuse of the word "artisanal" in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything." 

If Bourdain was a bit of a curmudgeon, this didn't take away from his charm. His refreshing honesty despite his celebrity status only added to his appeal. Because he was so brutal in his honesty ("I would like to see the pumpkin spice craze drowned in its own blood. Quickly," Bourdain said on Reddit), whenever Bourdain said he actually liked something it was probably worth checking out. To take one example, the chef who once declared a war on fast food (via The Guardian) may have surprised some readers of The Boston Globe when he admitted that Popeyes' macaroni and cheese was a guilty pleasure.

Back on that Reddit AMA, someone asked Bourdain to name his favorite Kentucky bourbon. In his answer, Bourdain admitted he didn't know much about bourbon. But he knew what he liked. "Very very old Fitzgerald, that's some nice stuff," he wrote. "If you were to present me with a bottle of very very very very very old Fitzgerald, I don't know if it exists, but man that's good."

Old Fitzgerald is an award-winning, wheated whiskey, according to distiller Heaven Hill Brands' website. If you're shopping for plain Old Fitzgerald in its current release, Drizly will sell you a fifth of the stuff for less than 20 bucks, according to the liquor delivery service's website. But what Anthony Bourdain was talking about — the "very very" old stuff — will set you back quite a bit more. Wine-Searcher lists bottles of Very Old Fitzgerald from the 1960s for $4,000. 

Around Prohibition, the Old Fitzgerald whiskey brand was owned by "Pappy" Van Winkle, according to Heaven Hill Brands. The "Pappy" label is also well known in bourbon circles. About a decade ago, the New York Post declared Pappy Van Winkle bourbon to be the most sought-after liquor in the city, if not the world. Bourdain had something to do with this. He must have liked the sweeter wheated bourbons (most bourbons contain rye) because he once declared Pappy "the most glorious bourbon on the face of the planet," according to the Post. Wine Enthusiast said Bourdain tried Pappy Van Winkle for the first time on an episode of "The Layover" that aired in 2012. On that show, he said of Pappy, "If God made Bourbon, this is what he'd make." By the time Bourdain made an appearance on a Reddit "Ask Me Anything," in 2016, he had apparently moved on to Old Fitzgerald ... very old.