Updated: Want to win a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle and help local entrepreneurs? Here’s how

Update:

The NXTUS bourbon raffle has been canceled. People who purchased the $100 tickets were notified on Tuesday.

“What happened?” said an e-mail to buyers. “Well, just like the entrepreneurs NXTUS serves, we were attempting to innovate. We wanted to offer something different to potential supporters of our organization, and as all entrepreneurs know, doing something different is hard. Sometimes you encounter obstacles you didn’t foresee, no matter what your market research indicated. In this case, it was an unanticipated regulatory issue.”

Original story:

Even casual fans of bourbon perk up a bit when they hear a mention of Pappy Van Winkle, a coveted bourbon known for its rarity.

Wichita’s NXTUS, a nonprofit entrepreneurship support organization, has found four bottles of Pappy-related products along with 15 other top bourbons for a raffle to raise money for the group.

“Our mission is to help innovators and entrepreneurs grow companies of significance,” said executive director Mary Beth Jarvis.

The focus is on Wichita and Kansas entrepreneurs, but Jarvis said the organization is interconnected regionally and nationally.

She said it’s named for being a nexus, or a hub, for entrepreneurs and resources and to indicate an “investment in creating the ‘next us.’ ”

NXTUS has had philanthropic and grant support, but this is its first raffle.

“I would never have predicted the rarity passion,” Jarvis said.

As she’s learned about the cultlike following that Pappy and other brands have, Jarvis also has learned how hard they are to come by.

Through her past work as president and CEO of Wichita Festivals, Jarvis worked with liquor distributors, so she contacted them about acquiring special bourbons for the raffle.

“Ah, not gonna happen,” they told her. “Not in this state. Not in this year.”

NXTUS senior associate Quinn Robertson led a team that scoured the country for a high-end and, in some cases, rare 19-bottle collection.

“It’s like the ultimate rare bourbon collection in one fell swoop,” Jarvis said.

Bottles include a 15-year-old Pappy Van Winkle along with three other Pappy Van Winkle products; six bottles of Weller products, including Weller Antique and Weller Special Reserve; five other Buffalo Trace products; and four bottles from other makers. Tickets are $100 to win the collection.

Jarvis said scoring the bottles wasn’t about pulling strings.

“We wish.”

She said it was “really intense research and a lot of crossed fingers.”

The bottles are safely locked for now, though Jarvis did take them to a couple of promotional photo shoots.

“I’m pretty sure at one point the trunk of my car was worth the rest of my car.”

Tickets are available until 11:59 p.m. Central Standard Time on Nov. 29, which is Giving Tuesday, unless they sell out before then. The drawing is Nov. 30.

There are only 2,014 tickets, a number chosen because NXTUS started in 2014 when it was known as the e2e Accelerator, which stood for entrepreneur to entrepreneur.

Jarvis noted that those odds are “so much better odds than the Powerball.”

To buy a ticket, go to www.nxtus.io/bourbon.

The money raised will “go straight into the programs that we run for Kansas entrepreneurs,” Jarvis said.

“We are of most help to entrepreneurs that really want to figure out how to grow and scale what they’re doing.”

NXTUS began taking applications for its first 2023 program on Tuesday. It’s a free program for entrepreneurs who are seeking coaching and resources.

Just as entrepreneurs learn from trial and error, Jarvis said the NXTUS team will learn through the raffle experiment.

“We’ll see what this teaches us.”

In addition to learning about rare bourbons, Jarvis already has had a painful realization, too.

She’s in trouble at home because the raffle is open to anyone except employees and families of NXTUS.

“My husband and my brother were truly the most despondent about it.”

This story was originally published November 15, 2022 at 9:59 AM.