Buffalo Trace Is Auctioning Off Coveted Pappy Van Winkle and More Whiskeys for Kentucky Storm Relief

Kentucky has been rocked by a series of floods and devastating storms over the past few months, including one flood that shut down the Buffalo Trace Distillery for a period of time. In order to raise money for relief efforts to help those affected by these natural disasters, the distillery is auctioning off some of its most popular and collectible whiskeys starting today, along with a few special experiences.
The initiative is called the Pour It Forward for Kentucky Charity Fundraiser, and it includes items donated by parent company Sazerac and some of its partners (the Van Winkle family, Chris and Morgane Stapleton, the PGA) to raise money for people impacted by the deadly tornado earlier this month and the severe flooding in April. The items are listed at the website BlockBar, and 100 percent of the proceeds will go to benefit the American Red Cross and the Franklin County Flood Relief Fund held at the Blue Grass Community Foundation.
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'The recent spring storms have had a profound impact on communities across Kentucky and, especially in times like these, it's essential that we rally people to support our neighbors in need,' said Jake Wenz, Sazerac and Buffalo Trace president and CEO, in a statement. 'Buffalo Trace remains committed to supporting our home state, and every bid placed is a step toward helping our community recover.'
There are some fantastic whiskeys up for auction, some of which are the most collectible and coveted bottles produced at the distillery. These include some real unicorns like Weller Millennium (a blend of whiskeys aged up to 25 years), Eagle Rare 25 (which originally retailed for $10,000), and O.F.C. Vintage 2005 (valuable, although maybe not as much as the older vintages). There are also some of the most popular Buffalo Trace whiskeys available in complete sets—Pappy Van Winkle, the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, the 2024 Prohibition Collection, and the entire E.H. Taylor Jr. lineup. A bottle of 20-year-old Double Eagle Very Rare is also available, and it comes with a coffee table made from a barrel used to age that whiskey.
It's not just bottles that are up for auction, however. There's the Sazerac Barrel Select experience, which includes a stay at the Stagg Lodge, a tour of the distillery, and a chance to pick a barrel of Blanton's Gold. Chris and Morgane Stapleton donated an Epiphone Hummingbird Studio guitar and a bottle of Chris's collab with Buffalo Trace, Traveller Whiskey, each emblazoned with an autograph. There's also a trip for two to Forth Worth, Texas, to visit the set where the Yellowstone spinoff Y: Marshals is being filmed. Finally, there are two ongoing sweepstakes: one for a chance to win a bottle of O.F.C. Vintage 2006, the other sponsored by the PGA for a chance to play golf at the PLAYERS Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass and a pair of Buffalo Trace Bettinardi golf putters.
The Pour It Forward for Kentucky auction starts today and will run through 10 a.m. on Thursday, June 5. Visit BlockBar now if you're interested; bids start at $100 for each lot with no reserves.
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Fast Company

2 days ago

• Fast Company

The story behind the innovative L.A.B. putter that just won the U.S. Open

On Sunday, J.J. Spaun sank a 64-foot putt to win the U.S. Open, one of the PGA Tour's four major tournaments. Over the final seven holes, he made more than 136 feet of putts, including that curling 64-footer on 18. He was the only player to finish the U.S. Open under par, and it was his first career major win. It was also the first major win for L.A.B. Golf, the boutique manufacturer that outfitted Spaun with his DF3 custom putter. L.A.B. Golf is the new company shaking up the putter circuit, and its innovation is simple. Traditional putters have shafts that attach in front of the clubface or at the heel, creating twisting forces during the stroke. L.A.B. putters position the shaft directly through the putter's center of gravity, behind the face, the shaft stabbing the putter head like a toothpick spearing a square of cheese. This creates a nontraditional forward shaft lean that eliminates torque and helps the face naturally stay square throughout the putting motion. 'Every other putter you've used, you're trying to keep it square,' Sam Hahn, L.A.B. Golf cofounder and CEO, says. 'With L.A.B., you're trying to let it stay square. So it becomes more like so many other stroke sports out there—throwing darts, shooting a free throw, throwing a ball—where you're not thinking about managing the instrument, you're thinking about the target.' The company has been built on one simple philosophy: Putting doesn't have to suck. An accidental garage innovation In 2014, a Reno-based club builder named Bill Presse made an accidental discovery in his garage. While testing new designs, he stripped the grip from a putter, and when he grabbed the slick, ungripped shaft, his hand slipped and the putter face flopped open, almost instinctively. The putter head wanted to twist and turn on its own. This sparked Presse's curiosity. Using a makeshift device crafted from a crutch and fishing wire, he tested every putter in his collection to see if any would remain square when properly suspended. None did. So he drilled holes in dozens of putter heads to find the precise shaft placement that would eliminate the unwanted rotation. This led him to design (and patent) the first lie angle balance putter, the Directed Force. He sold his L.A.B. putter directly out of his garage and at golf events and showcases. A key early adopter In 2017, Hahn acquired one of Presse's putters from a golf instructor and experienced dramatic improvement on the greens. (For you golf nerds, he went from a 1 handicap to plus 3.5 in six weeks.) Then, the club's head fell off. When Hahn called customer service and sent in his broken L.A.B. putter, Presse personally called to apologize. 'We hit it off instantly,' Hahn says. 'We talked for hours on the phone and learned that we're kindred golf spirits.' A few months later, Bill's club-making company was struggling and was about to close its doors. Hahn, a music venue owner in Eugene, Oregon, and a closet golf addict, saw an opportunity and partnered with Bill in 2018 to form L.A.B. Golf. 'The lie angle balancing concept was there, but nothing else really was,' Hahn says. 'The marketing wasn't there, the manufacturing wasn't there, the infrastructure, the branding, the general vibe—there simply wasn't a company there. But there was a concept.' The L.A.B. Rats With no marketing budget, L.A.B.'s growth had to happen organically. Hahn spent time jumping between golf forums and online groups, explaining the physics behind lie angle balance and taking a humble approach when skeptical golfers said their putters looked like branding irons. 'We knew we had to be a little self-deprecating and a little humble at first when we were out there making some pretty bold claims,' Hahn says. Then, in 2021, Hahn discovered something unexpected: Two L.A.B. customers had created a Facebook group for L.A.B. fans. The group exploded into a thriving community where golfers share putting tips and success stories, many singing L.A.B.'s praises. Hahn and his team began engaging with members, answering questions, and gathering feedback to inform their product design. It's a real-time focus group that Hahn and his team have leveraged to not only continue to iterate and innovate, but to build putters that golfers actually want to use. 'I log on to Facebook at night and see what's going on,' Hahn says. 'So when we sit in a product meeting and try to figure out what we should do next, it's easy, because the customers are telling us every day what they want next.' Today, the group has been rebranded as the 'Lab Rats.' It has more than 32,000 members and has been a critical component of the company's organic growth in popularity among amateur golfers. L.A.B. cracks the PGA tour Pro golfers are notoriously traditional and skeptical toward innovation. Yes, there are outliers, like Bryson DeChambeau, a famous tinkerer who has even used 3D-printed irons. Then there's Adam Scott: 2013 Masters champion, former World No. 1, and son of a club manufacturer. Scott first saw L.A.B. design in action during the 2019 Pebble Beach Pro-Am, when surfing legend Kelly Slater used the Directed Force to dominate putting competitions. 'Kelly rolled it better than anyone in our group—the two pros, the other amateur,' Scott recalls. 'You couldn't help but take notice.' Scott began using the putter on the Tour in 2019, pivoting to the L.A.B. Golf Mezz.1 putter in 2022. The following year, Scott's curiosity evolved into collaboration when he and Hahn met at the L.A. Country Club for a couple of beers, talking putters and sketching designs on cocktail napkins. The result: the L.A.B. OZ.1. 'The initial inspiration for the OZ.1 started far away from putters and was more about classic, timeless designs that I like, like a Porsche 911 or a Rolex Datejust watch,' Scott explains. 'That was the starting point, and then the nice thing was that we got to include some of the real L.A.B. look in this more conventional design.' Scott became L.A.B.'s first official brand ambassador, and it's easy to see why. Since switching to L.A.B. putters full-time in 2022, Scott has achieved remarkable consistency, ranking 19th and 27th on tour in strokes gained putting the last two years, a significant improvement from his previous putting struggles that once saw him rank as low as 188th. And when one golfer tries something new and has success, others take note. Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler, and Lucas Glover are among roughly a dozen PGA Tour pros who have used L.A.B. putters. With them, of course, is Spaun, who wielded L.A.B.'s DF3 model on Sunday, a refined version of the company's original Direct Force design. Span's specific setup includes a 34-inch length, 70-degree lie angle, TPT graphite shaft, and two-degree shaft lean customized with a blacked-out Scotty Cameron grip. The putter paid dividends throughout the tournament, where he gained over 10 strokes on the field with his putting—the second-best performance in the tournament. His final-round heroics included not just the tournament-clinching bomb, but also crucial birdies from 40 and 22 feet on the back nine. 'It's been really good for me lately,' Spaun said in a press conference earlier this year after The Players Championship, where he lost to Rory McIlroy in a playoff. 'Hopefully it keeps doing what it's supposed to be doing.' Spaun's win puts L.A.B. on the map L.A.B. placed two players in Sunday's final groups with Spaun and Scott each starting the final round in the top four, demonstrating the technology's growing acceptance among golf's elite performers, despite resistance from both players and manufacturers. 'The whole environment is wildly competitive, cutthroat even,' Hahn says. 'The other reps actively work to keep their product in people's hands, and they don't like it when nobody from nowhere starts taking market share.' Still, performance trumps politics. In addition to the dozen players on the Tour who have used L.A.B. putters, the company's European tour rep reports 16 putters in play on the DP World Tour, signaling the putter's slow but steady adoption. Spaun's U.S. Open win is yet another windfall for the young company looking to earn a larger share of golf's massive equipment market, valued at $11.7 billion globally in 2025. The company itself has grown anywhere from 150 to 300% every year since inception, according to Hahn, quadrupling its employee headcount to 225 over the last two and a half years. Sales tripled in both 2023 and 2024, and the company is currently on pace to double sales in 2025, though Spaun's win could accelerate that trajectory. And they've done it all while maintaining complete financial independence, and by defying conventional industry wisdom about marketing and endorsements—which Hahn says they'll continue doing, as long as it keeps working. 'We don't create product in the name of growth,' Hahn says. 'We create product in the name of making a better product. The growth just kind of takes care of itself if you honor the consumer.'

Miami Herald

4 days ago

• Miami Herald

Eviction cases still soaring in the Bay Area five years after COVID-19

The eviction court of Alameda County, California, was crowded on a recent Wednesday. It usually is. Tenants, family members, landlords and attorneys - about 100 people in all - waited long hours to appear before a judge at the Hayward Hall of Justice. Fifty-six people were slated to appear that day in a marathon of back-to-back sessions. Many of the renters were nervous. "Desperate, scared, depressed, filled with anxiety, as you can see," said Chris, 60, his hands shaking. A former software engineer who rents an apartment in Alameda, he asked not to use his last name, fearing it would further threaten his housing. In eviction court, state law requires that case files remain confidential until 60 days after judgments. "I can't sleep at night," Chris said. "Lost my job - that's why I'm here." An eviction might force some of those at the court to move in with family. Landlords might be reluctant to rent to them in the future. Or, they might have to live in a tent or in their car, another statistic in the Bay Area's crisis of homelessness. Crammed eviction courts are the new normal in the Bay Area. Nearly four years after pandemic-era pauses on evictions began to expire, landlords are seeking to evict tenants through the court system at a higher rate than they did before COVID-19 disrupted life and work for millions in the region. That's the case in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties as well as San Francisco, according to a Bay Area News Group analysis of superior court data. Two years after the expiration of its eviction moratorium and a "wave" of evictions that followed, Alameda County leads the region in eviction cases. In the eviction process, a landlord gives a tenant notice to move out or meet certain terms, for instance, getting caught up on rent. If the tenant doesn't pay up or move out in time, the landlord can try to evict them by filing a lawsuit. In 2019, Alameda County tallied 226 eviction cases filed per 100,000 residents. After its pandemic-era eviction moratorium expired in 2023, that spiked to 293 cases per 100,000 residents that year, then 362 filed per 100,000 residents in 2024. Filings this year were on track to pass that high-water mark as of late April. "It turns out, it's not a wave. It's just the new normal of evictions filed every week, every month," said Grant Kirkpatrick, a staff attorney at the Oakland-based Centro Legal de la Raza, which represents tenants in court. The exact reasons for the continued uptick are unclear. Landlords can take renters to court for missing rent payments, violating their leases and more. In the Bay Area, local governments apparently don't track the causes of evictions. According to attorneys for low-income tenants and advocates for landlords - two groups usually at odds - most tenants are being taken to court for failing to pay rent. That stark reality is accelerating, but it's nothing new in the Bay Area's notorious housing market. It's also unclear how many of the eviction filings result in an eviction. If a tenant responds to their eviction notice in time and appears in court, they may be able to reach an agreement with their landlord to stay housed. Or, they can take the case to trial. But many don't try their hand in court and simply move out when given notice, attorneys said. When that happens, it isn't reflected in the case filing data. "It's expensive and time-consuming to move forward with evictions," said Whitney Prout, executive vice president of legal affairs at the California Apartment Association, which advocates for landlords. "It's not something our members like to do. The main reason you do that is if someone isn't paying the rent." Low-income tenants "cannot sustainably afford the cost of rent," said Tristia Bauman, directing attorney at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, which represents low-income tenants in eviction court in Santa Clara County. The high rate of evictions is persisting in spite of local rent control measures, such as those in Berkeley and Oakland, and protections for tenants. In Silicon Valley, the wealth divide has widened at twice the rate of the rest of the U.S. over the past decade, with stark disparities in housing and other necessities for Black and Latino residents. Eviction attorneys there and in the East Bay say the vast majority of their clients are people of color. Plus, many are seniors or disabled. In April, the typical renter in the San Jose area needed to earn $136,532 per year to pay apartment rents at just 30% of the median income - the highest threshold in the U.S. that month. In Oakland, about half of all households are "rent burdened" and spend more than 30% of their income on rent. At the Hayward Hall of Justice, veteran eviction attorney Anne Tamiko Omura sifted through a stack of files on a desk in the crowded hallway. Every week, her nonprofit, the Oakland-based Eviction Defense Center, represents about 40 tenants at court for free. She took a file and walked to a group of renters seated at a bench. They told her they owed more than $17,000 in payments, but they could make progress on that debt if their landlord agreed to a monthslong repayment plan. Omura recommended against it. "If you miss a single payment, the sheriff comes and throws you out the door," she told them. "Do you understand that?" Nearby, Chris anxiously waited for his appearance before the judge. At one point, he felt too dizzy to speak. He said he fell behind on rent after his partner left him, and then he lost his job. He too hoped his landlord would agree to a payment plan as part of a settlement. "That's my prayer," he said. Two crucifixes hung around his neck. Two legal aid attorneys conferred with Chris in the crowded hallway. It's common for tenants to appear at court without an attorney, and that day, 23 arrived without a lawyer, including Chris. Unrepresented renters tend to have worse outcomes in court, studies show. But some cities and counties fund legal aid groups to cover that gap, including Centro Legal de la Raza. Between that organization and Omura's, all the tenants would have an attorney by their side that day, said Kirkpatrick, the Centro staff attorney. State Sen. Aisha Wahab, an influential Democrat who represents a swath of the East Bay and Silicon Valley, said the high eviction rates are "disappointing," but not surprising. She chairs the Senate Committee on Housing and has played a key role in top Democrats' splashy campaign to make California more affordable this year. A cornerstone of that push is Wahab's SB 681, which would prevent landlords from charging fees that aren't spelled out in a rental agreement. Democrats passed that bill in the state Senate on June 4. Wahab and Democrats also advanced legislation that would give tenants two weeks before a landlord could begin to evict them for nonpayment. The status quo is currently three days. Wahab, who is skeptical of developers, said the Bay Area can't simply build its way out of its housing crisis. "The reality is, we need to keep people housed longer," she said. Prout, of the apartment association, doubts that Wahab's plan would reduce the eviction rate much. What would, she said, is a permanent and "robust" rental assistance program. Currently, the Bay Area is a patchwork of rent assistance; some cities and counties run such programs, such as Santa Clara County and Oakland. Elsewhere, tenants facing tough choices must fend for themselves. (Bay Area News Group Data Reporter Jovi Dai contributed to this report.) Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.

Yahoo

5 days ago

• Yahoo

Brian Rolapp Named PGA Tour CEO

Brian Rolapp Named PGA Tour CEO originally appeared on Athlon Sports. White smoke lofted in the air on Tuesday as the worst-kept secret in professional golf became a fact when Brian Rolapp was announced as the CEO of PGA Tour Enterprises. Advertisement A search that began in January ended when the 20-year NFL executive was named to take on a PGA Tour that needed to see change at the highest levels. PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan will shift his responsibilities to Rolapp and will step down at the end of 2026. Oddly, Rolapp is not a golf guy. Even though he plays golf, he was unwilling to disclose his handicap. Still, he was willing to explain his introduction to the game as a worker in the shack at the turn at Congressional Country Club outside of Washington, D.C. But when asked substantive questions, Rolapp either deflected or said he was not prepared to answer them yet until he had time to study the situation. Advertisement 'Professional golf is evolving, as are the ways fans consume sports,' Rolapp said in an open letter. 'My goal as CEO is to honor golf's traditions but not be overly bound by them.' Brian Rolapp, NFL executive vice president and chief of media and business officer, speaks to the media during the annual league meetings at the JW Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images Translation: Get ready for some changes, but where do you begin, and what could they be? Rolapp made no indication where change would come from, but he was clear about not throwing any shade on the chances of a LIV deal, which seemingly is dead in the water. 'When it comes to the situation with LIV, I think that's a complex situation that's probably something I should learn more about before I speak,' Rolapp said. 'But I will say my focus is on growing the Tour, making it better and really moving on from the position of strength that it has.' Advertisement With the naming of a CEO driven by Strategic Sports Group, the investors that put $1.5 billion into the tour last year, the likelihood is that change is on the horizon and Rolapp will have a very short honeymoon. 'Where we deploy that capital, I have ideas,' Rolapp said. 'I don't think I want to share them now, but that's going to be part of the job to get in there and talk about it.' Related: Rory McIlroy Sees Worldwide Golf as Part of the LIV Discussions Related: LIV CEO Sees Tailwind This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 18, 2025, where it first appeared.