Heaven’s Door came knocking for Dylan
Artist has new collection of whiskies out this month
In late 2015, an unexpected name popped up in the liquor industry press: Bob Dylan.
Atrademark application for the term “bootleg whiskey” had been filed under Dylan’s name. Among those who noticed the news was Marc Bushala, 52, a lifelong fan and a liquor entrepreneur whose bourbon brand, Angel’s Envy, had just been sold for $150 million (U.S.). Bushala said he immediately spent weeks “obsessing over this concept of what a Dylan whiskey could be.”
So he reached out, and after being vetted by Dylan’s representatives, Bushala — who speaks branding jargon such as “flavour profile” and “name exploration” in an earnest Midwestern accent — talked to Dylan by phone and proposed working together on a portfolio of small-batch whiskies. As he saw it, there was just one problem: The name “bootleg,” while an apt Dylanological pun, wasn’t quite right for a topshelf liquor. Might Dylan, Nobel laureate, be open to some name exploration?
“It was a little bit daunting,” Bushala said of his pitch.
But it worked. This month, he and Dylan will introduce Heaven’s Door, a collection of three whiskies — a straight rye, a straight bourbon and a “double-barreled” whiskey. They are Dylan’s entry into the booming celebrity-branded spirits market, the latest career twist for an artist who has spent five decades confounding expectations.
Dylan is not simply licensing his name. He is a full partner in the business, Heaven’s Door Spirits, which Bushala said had raised $35 million from investors.
“We both wanted to create a collection of American whiskies that, in their own way, tell a story,” Dylan said in a statement to the New York Times. “I’ve been travelling for decades, and I’ve been able to try some of the best spirits that the world of whiskey has to offer. This is great whiskey.”
Heaven’s Door is meant to conjure a broader idea of Dylan that is part Renaissance man, part nighthawk. The label design is derived from his ironwork sculptures, with rural iconography — crows, wagon wheels — in silhouette. And in promotional photos lighted like classic movie stills, a tuxedoclad Dylan, 76, gazes off in a dark cocktail lounge or lonely diner, glass in hand.
Like his recent albums of standards, they portray Dylan as an urbane but still gritty crooner — one who might well wind down his day with a glass of bourbon.
“Dylan has these qualities that actually work well for a whiskey,” Bushala said. “He has great authenticity. He is a quintessential American. He does things the way he wants to do them. I think these are good attributes for a superpremium whiskey as well.”
Dylan is entering the craft whiskey market as the business is exploding. Helped by a craze for classic cocktails, sales of American whiskey grew 52 per cent over the last five years, to $3.4 billion in 2017, according to data from the Distilled Spirits Council.
The first batches of Heaven’s Door were developed with Jordan Via, formerly of the Breckenridge Distillery in Colorado. Together, the team tried various novel finishes.
To preserve Dylan’s original name for the whiskey, the company will issue an annual Bootleg Series in limited editions, in ceramic bottles decorated with his oil and watercolour paintings.
The first, a 25-year-old whiskey, will be released next year and cost about $300. (Heaven’s Door’s standard line goes for $50 to $80 a bottle.)
Bill Flanagan, a veteran music journalist who has interviewed Dylan, likens him to Hank Williams and Johnny Cash — selfmade entertainers who saw no conflict in joining the marketplace. And then there is simply Dylan’s talent for provocation.
“Dylan has always resisted any attempt to fence him in,” Flanagan said. “As soon as people start calling him king of the folkies, or patron saint of the counterculture, or beloved anti-commercial leftist icon — he almost always does something to thwart that.”