It ain’t tea, babe: Dylan plugs whiskey
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Music icon Bob Dylan is partnering with a distillery to make whiskey at a 140-year-old Tennessee church and bottle it under the name Heaven’s Door.
News outlets report Dylan has partnered with Angel’s Envy Bourbon cofounder Marc Bushala in the venture. The New York Times first reported on the plan. Dylan recorded four albums in Nashville.
The Tennessean reports Heaven’s Door’s first whiskey releases include a Tennessee straight bourbon whiskey, a double barrel whiskey and a straight rye whiskey.
The whiskeys initially will be available in Tennessee, Texas, California, Florida, New York and Illinois. 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 whiskeys that, in their own way, tell a story,” Dylan said in a statement to the Times. “I’ve been traveling 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.”
Dylan, 76, has never shied from commercial deals, and in the long run they have barely grazed his reputation.
In 1994, he allowed Richie Havens to sing his anthem “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” in an ad for the button-down accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand. Ten years later, Dylan was mocked for appearing in a Victoria’s Secret commercial (in which he tossed his black cowboy hat to a supermodel wearing angel wings). Since then, he has done spots for Apple, Cadillac, Pepsi, IBM and Google.
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 percent over the last five years, to $3.4 billion in 2017, according to the Distilled Spirits Council.