Oh, celebrity whiskeys. If I had a dollar for every PR email I’ve ever received hyping Jason Aldean’s Wolf Moon Bourbon … well, I’d have at least enough by now to purchase a nice bottle of whiskey for myself. Seemingly every musician these days, especially within the sphere of country music, needs to have their own “collaboration” spirit. Most of these whiskeys come down to simply sourcing some young bourbon, slapping a label on the stuff and calling it a day. That, however, was clearly not good enough for the likes of Brad Paisley. His camp decided to take things quite a few steps further when they conceived of the new American Highway Reserve Bourbon.
This product stands out in the field of celebrity backed spirits for a few reasons. For one, its $100 MSRP puts it in a very different class, especially form most of the whiskey being hawked by country music stars. Most of these guys are not exactly aiming their branded bourbons at a luxury whiskey market, and are instead trying to make a product that is as accessible and affordable as possible. With the mania of bourbon bros continuing to build unabated, however, and package stores all too happy to join in on the phenomenon of bourbon price gouging, perhaps this was a wise move by Paisley and co., one calculated to take advantage of the compulsion of whiskey geeks to pursue literally anything advertised as “limited.”
And then there’s the central gimmick, and the reason for the American Highway name. Paisley’s brand is so named because a portion of the young spirit was loaded onto a 53-foot semi-trailer labeled as the “Rolling Rickhouse,” which followed his 2019 nationwide tour for 7,314 miles, across 25 states. The gimmick here is essentially like a land-based version of Jefferson’s Ocean bourbon—the “rocking of the Rolling Rickhouse draws out the barrel’s natural sugars, while the climate swings push and pull the bourbon in and out of the wood, imparting more and more deep oak flavor.” According to the press release, “it’s a set of variables that add up to something amazing, just like any journey or any country song.”
Which is to say, it’s a gimmick, and an immaculate one—and one they presume will be a big hit, because a second batch was already aged on the Rolling Rickhouse during Paisley’s 2021 tour, scheduled for release in 2022.
Here’s the thing, though, that is all too likely to be lost on the rank and file drinker. Sure, some barrels were aged in a semi-trailer, but it’s ultimately going to be impossible for the consumer to know what, if anything, that contributed to the final product. Because ultimately, the heavily jostled “truck bourbon” makes up just a portion of the final blend that is in these $100 bottles. I would be genuinely curious to taste one of those “straight from the truck” barrels, just for the sake of the novelty, but in the final product it’s impossible to say which of the four bourbons involved contributed which flavors. It’s ultimately just a clever gimmick; what we need to consider is the actual provenance of these whiskeys.
And good news on that front—turns out that Brad Paisley has some decent taste, and decided to work with Bardstown Bourbon Co. in the sourcing and blending of this whiskey. The final product is a blend of four Kentucky-distilled, “rye forward” bourbons ranging in age from 4-15 years. That essentially makes it seem like a spiritual cousin to Bardstown Bourbon Company’s own Fusion series, which indeed fuses their own younger spirit with older sourced Kentucky bourbons. I presume the same thing is happening here, and that the two 4-year-old bourbons in this mix are BBC’s own product. It’s a bit hard to say, given that BBC seems to have many mashbills. Regardless, the final breakdown is as follows.