Legacy of Celebration and Hospitality
Honor Women's History Month with the Women of Pappy & Company
After nearly 13 years running a small business, we know there isn’t a milestone too small to celebrate or an achievement too seemingly insignificant to honor. Yet, we don’t see Women’s History Month as either of those. Especially given the serendipity of celebrating it as we happen to approach our birthday on the 13th day of the 3rd month, as we prepare to mark 13 years in business. How’s that for some numerology!
March feels like a very welcome turn towards a very welcome spring, especially after a particularly long, cold, and snowy winter for most of us, and well, you should know by now that we relish any opportunity to celebrate. So this March, we happily honor Women’s History Month as we reflect on nearly 13 years in business as a women-founded and women-led organization. No small feat indeed.
Women’s History Month has been an officially designated month only since 1987, yet the landscape has changed dramatically since it was first celebrated as an honorary “Women’s Day” in 1909. While we are thrilled to pause and honor the incredible strides made in advancing Women’s History Month in those years in between, it honestly feels a bit strange to us. As we never set out to explicitly become a female-founded company, we simply set out to found our company with a personal mission, vision, and desire to share our family’s bourbon heritage.
However, given the opportunity to reflect on our time as female founders, especially in such a heavily male-dominated industry as the bourbon world is, we can see it all now in a different light. A reflection of the generations of Van Winkle men who represented our family’s bourbon legacy, certainly, with a deeper appreciation and awareness for the impact of the matriarchs of the Van Winkle family, and what it means to us today to be a female-founded company.
Would we call ourselves naive if we reached back into our collective memories and thought about the time before we decided to jump in headfirst and actually start the company that had been, up to that point, an idea, a dream, or a conversation tossed around the dinner table? What would we tell those versions of ourselves now, as veterans of the small business world this many years later? Would we rethink our decision or do anything differently? We don’t necessarily think in those terms (because, honestly, as anyone who runs a small business knows, we don’t have that kind of time!), but on the cusp of honoring a significant timeline of events during a significantly dedicated month, we will allow ourselves a moment of introspection.
The short answer is no. No, we wouldn’t really do anything differently. The reason we are here today, allowed the opportunity to contemplate the cusp of our 13th year in business during Women’s History Month, is simply down to the sheer existence of these 13 years of “figuring it out as we go.” Everything we have learned along the way, regardless of how difficult or challenging it was at the time, every lesson, every failure (yes, those are equally as important, if not more so than the successes), every attempt, every false start, every achievement, every partnership, has all led us to this point, and never once have we second guessed our right to have a seat at this table.
Can all of that be attributed to being a female-founded, women-led, small business? Certainly not. Has it impacted us at every step, in both measurable and immeasurable ways? Without any doubt in our minds.
It would be a nearly impossible task to untangle each element, especially as it is simply all we know, however we can extract a few of the particularly illuminating facets. It won’t be surprising to know that just as each of our collections can be tied to a very specific feature of our heritage, the celebratory elements of our female founded sensibilities can be equally as traced to the generations of incredible Van Winkle women who came before us.
Mostly we have an incredible wealth of knowledge to rely on, inspired by the strength, warmth and iconic hospitality of generations of Van Winkle women. After all the story and the legacy of Pappy Van Winkle has always been just as much theirs. Pappy himself would have been the first to tell you, and proudly, who was really in charge. Yet, while they were the backbone, emotion and quiet strength behind the company, we are the first generation of women to have an active role in the bourbon industry. Still it is the lessons from previous generations we take have taken with us as we have forged our own path.
Lead with curiosity, empathy, and authenticity.
Focus on hospitality and heritage.
Mission driven, family focused.
