Knockin' On Heaven's Door Distillery: Bob Dylan Launches Whiskey

NASHVILLE, TN -- In February 1966, the legendary Bob Dylan came to Nashville to record his acclaimed album "Blonde On Blonde." Fifty-two years later, he's coming back to produce something a little more brown.

Dylan, in a partnership with Angel’s Envy Bourbon co-founder Marc Bushala, is launching Heaven's Door, a line of high-end Tennessee whiskeys, making him the latest celebrity to get in on America's whiskey boom. The New York Times, which first reported on the venture this week, said the whiskey has been in the works since 2015.

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Heaven's Door's distillery will open at Fourth Avenue and Elm Street south of Broadway in Nashville next year in a National Register of Historic Places-listed building that opened first as a church in 1871 but served as the long-time home of Tuck-Hinton Architects until Bushala and Darek Ball of Nashville-based Corsair Distillery bought it in 2017.

Heaven's Door will launch its whiskey line next month with a Tennessee Straight Bourbon Whiskey (Dylan being a legendary wordsmith, let's not quibble too much with his conflating Tennessee whiskey with bourbon), a rye and a "double-barrel" whiskey. Bushala told the Times that Dylan, a long-time whiskey drinker, helped hone the flavor of the latter with a vague remark during a tasting about how the spirit "should taste like being in a wood structure."

As opposed to other celebrity-backed spirits - like Jay Z's Armand de Brignac champagne - Dylan isn't simply lending his name to Heaven's Door. He's a full partner with Bushala and, as indicated by that charmingly Dylanesque tasting note, an integral part of the process.

“We both wanted to create a collection of American whiskeys that, in their own way, tell a story,” Dylan said in a statement. “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. I am happy to be partnering with Marc and our entire team as we bring Heaven’s Door to the public.”

The first run of whiskeys will be available in Tennessee, Texas, California, Florida, New York and Illinois, ranging in price from $50 to $80. A 10-year-aged whiskey will be bottled and distributed in the fall.

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for AFI