Anthony Bourdain Was Completely Infatuated With This 1870s-Era Bourbon Brand

The late, great Anthony Bourdain was not known to mince words. When he took issue with something, he let us know in no uncertain terms. He had a bone to pick with Paula Deen, accusing her of "telling an already obese nation that it's OK to eat food that is killing us" in a TV Guide interview; he declared American-raised chicken "slimy and tasteless" in an article for The New Yorker; and during a Reddit AMA, he joked that he wanted to see pumpkin spice lattes "drowned in [their] own blood." But anyone who's received positive feedback from a tough professor will tell you that a degree of irascibility only makes praise that much more meaningful. Bourdain was as effusive about his passions as he was about his dislikes, ranging from travel to his beloved Waffle House — not to mention his favorite brand of bourbon, Old Fitzgerald..

In that aforementioned Reddit AMA from 2016, Bourdain was asked about his favorite Kentucky bourbon (no, not all bourbon is made in Kentucky, although most of it is), and he had an answer ready. "Very very old Fitzgerald, that's some nice stuff," he wrote, before having a little more fun with the brand name. "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."

Although Anthony Bourdain prided himself as a man of the people, making a point to interact with regular folks on shows like "No Reservations" and "Parts Unknown," his favorite bourbon had a decidedly non-populist origin. In fact, for almost the first 20 years of its existence, it wasn't sold to the public at all. It was first produced in 1870 by one John E. Fitzgerald and sold on high-class trains, steamships, and in clubs. It officially hit the market in 1889, and managed to survive Prohibition as a "medicinal" beverage before being bought by the bourbon giant Pappy Van Winkle.

Bourdain had some fun with the name, but the "very old" distinction isn't just for show. There's Very Old Fitzgerald, a collector's edition which will fetch almost $5,000 on the market; there's Very Xtra Old Fitzgerald, which costs about $7,000; and then there's Very Very Old Fitzgerald, which is even older than previous, which will set you back as much as a whopping 23 grand for the releases that were aged for 15 years. These were bottled over fifty years ago, making them quite old indeed — but if you're on a budget, you can get the regular, 7-year-old Old Fitzgerald, which costs a much more reasonable $200.