How you can get rare bourbon barrel pick Kentucky priest is taking to the pope

A Kentucky priest who went viral for taking a bottle of Pappy to the pope is releasing his own bourbon.

Father Jim Sichko, a papal missionary who travels the U.S. doing random acts of kindness, is marking the 10th anniversary of the election of Pope Francis with a new rare Willett Distillery barrel pick.

Sichko, who has given Pope Francis a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle, a bourbon signed by University of Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops and several other bottles, wanted to create a special bourbon that would honor the Holy Father while raising money for Sichko’s Papal Mission of Mercy.

Sichko said he always wants to authentically represent the Bluegrass, which led him to deliver the spirit of Kentucky to the Vatican. And since then he’s had regular visits from the “Bourbon Fairy.” Often, the bottles left on his doorstep have notes saying things like, “For the Pope” or “Give this to the Swiss guards.” He documented on social media the time he got snowbound on I-75 in 2022 with a bottle of Thomas S. Moore bourbon.

Those tongue-in-check incidents landed him on late-night TV, where Jimmy Fallon dubbed him “Father Jim of the Heavenly Buzzed.”

In reality, Sichko isn’t much of whiskey drinker; he’s just high on the Holy Spirit. He gives gift cards to total strangers, from Delta flight crews to fellow restaurant diners; delivers bicycles to schools; offers financial assistance to families in need; and last year helped ferry loads of supplies to flood-ravaged Eastern Kentucky with the help of the UK football team.

Picking out barrel of Willett bourbon

But for the pope’s 10-year anniversary he managed to pull off something special.

“I tried for seven years to figure out how I could get a barrel pick, but I was always drawn to one of a very rare bourbon. I wanted it to be slightly different, so I really wanted somehow to get a Willett,” Sichko said. He kept hitting roadblocks but reached out to Julian Van Winkle, who helped make the connection to Drew Kulsveen, the master distiller at family-owned Kentucky distillery Willett in Bardstown.

Kulsveen set up a private tour and blind tasting and Sichko invited Lexington Bishop John Stowe, Sichko’s patrons at Delta Airlines, who invited friends at the Atlanta Braves, and Sichko asked a friend who happen to work at the Drug Enforcement Administration who “has an amazing bourbon nose.”

Sichko said that the tasting, his first, was an eye-opener. They started with samples from four barrels, then brought in two more. Not realizing how potent the barrel-strength samples would be, Sichko said his head was soon swimming.

“All of the others are huge bourbon connoisseurs and then there’s me. My bishop said, ‘wow, it’s big and bold and robust’ and another said ‘look how dark it is.’ And the Delta vice president said ‘what a nose,’” Sichko said. “I’m the host, I’m with my boss and with Delta Air Lines which has underwritten me for the past two years ... and I’m wasted.”

But the eventual choice was unanimous. They selected a barrel filled in January 2013 with an original Willett Distillery recipes. For 10 years the barrel was stored on the fourth floor of the five-story Warehouse A on the Willett Distillery campus in Bardstown.

It was bottled at 132.6 proof and has the Papal Seal with the Coat of Arms of Pope Francis on the bottle. Sichko said he plans to deliver Bottle No. 1 to the pope in honor of his anniversary.

And Sichko also plans to deliver another bottle, Number 34, when he meets basketball star Shaquille O’Neal on April 7, along with a custom pair of shoes similar to the ones he took the pope last year.

How you can get a bottle of Father Jim’s Kentucky bourbon

There will be about 125 bottles available through an online auction and raffle at frjims.com and at Ernie’s Spirits on Harrodsburg Road in Lexington. The distillery also will keep some bottles to offer to customers in the bar.

The auction opens on April 10; donations for each bottle in the auction begin at $1,000. Tickets for the raffle are $100; three bottles will be given away in the raffle. Only 1,000 raffle tickets are available. The raffle closes at on April 14 with the winners announced later that day.

The auction closes midnight April 15.

Sichko said that the actual Willett bourbon barrel also will be auctioned, as will some of the bottles that he’s “collected” over the last few years.

The proceeds from the bourbon auction and raffle, like the proceeds from sales of spaghetti sauce made from his mother’s recipe, will help to fund more works, including fulfilling Sichko’s promise to help rebuild the IGA in Isom, which was destroyed by flooding in 2022, reopen.