So for those who have hopped off the Pappy wagon, here are seven wheat bourbon alternatives that are just as good - and a whole lot cheaper - to drink now. This generally gives the whiskey a softer, sweeter, and fruitier flavor. Pappy, which is distilled at Buffalo Trace, is a wheated bourbon, which means that wheat is the secondary flavoring grain in the mash bill instead of the more common rye. With all of this in mind, we must ask ourselves - is it really worth spending thousands on a bottle, or hundreds for a pour at the bar? It all depends on your means, of course, and for those of us without expense accounts or trust funds, there are some excellent and affordable alternatives to drink instead. But, the truth is for most whiskey drinkers, the price-to-taste ratio on the juice just isn't there.

The pen-to-paper treatment only adds to the grandiose legend the whiskey holds. Pappy's mythos is now so large, sports writer Wright Thompson even tackled the subject in the book Pappyland, an incredible look at the history of the whiskey and the trials of fatherhood. It's so popular, in fact, that getting your hands on a bottle is pretty much impossible these days, between people clamoring to compete for bottles in state-wide lotteries and liquor authorities losing their jobs for hoarding bottles for themselves. Pappy Van Winkle, clearly, has become something of a phenomenon in the world of trendy bourbon.

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