I am skeptical about this bourbon. It screams pandering to a demographic willing to pay whatever it takes to get a Vineyard Vines whale monogrammed on their golf bag. Manning says the 13-year blended malt, which experts speculate is from the George Dickel distillery in Tennessee, is pretty good. Of course, in the same Indy Star article where he talks about his new liquor he also admits to getting heavily into Michelob Ultra.
Peyton Manning has never met a grind he didn’t embrace. Football, sure, but even in his playing days he was opening up pizza chains and hawking DirecTV with shocking efficiency. Now he’s on to his latest venture: whiskey.
Well, not just whiskey. Bourbon. Specifically, bourbon for rich dads.
Behold, Sweetens Cove, the $200 bottle with the janky Muppet-ly name. Manning saw a path paved by celebrities like George Clooney and Jay-Z and, uh, Fuzzy Zoeller and decided this was the perfect venture to add to his already-packed portfolio. And so he, along with Andy Roddick, decided to make his own whiskey based on a nine-hole golf course whose unspoken rule is a shot of bourbon before the first tee.
Ok, fine. I get the hustle. I even get Manning doing the legwork to cold call Indiana liquor stores to coerce them into stocking his signature booze. Who in the Hoosier State is going to say no to Peyton Manning?
There’s wisdom in getting involved in the spirits game. Conor McGregor’s stake in Proper Twelve Irish Whiskey has ensured lawyer money to save him from various legal scrapes long after he’s finished losing fights in the octagon. The increasing valuation of desired bourbons like Pappy Van Winkle has created a market for selling and reselling similar to the sport card bubble, only with a product you can drink when you lose thousands of dollars as the market deflates. Hell, I can’t find Blanton’s anywhere in the state of Wisconsin because adherents have effectively tripled the MSRP on every bottle.
But man, I am skeptical as hell about this bourbon. It screams pandering to a demographic willing to pay whatever it takes to get a Vineyard Vines whale monogrammed on their golf bag. Manning says the 13-year blended malt, which experts speculate is from the George Dickel distillery in Tennessee, is pretty good. Of course, in the same Indy Star article where he talks about his new liquor he also admits to getting heavily into Michelob Ultra.
For the most part, though, Manning calls himself an “authentic beer drinker.” He has rotated from heavy beer to light beer and now, 45 years old, Michelob Ultra has been a dear friend to him, he said.
Michelob Ultra is actively marketed to marathoners, fitness dorks, and anyone else who feels a bottle of High Life is “too heavy.” Holding a can is a warning that you will, unprompted, tell a stranger about that killer WOD you had this morning. Then follow that with “oh, I’m sorry, WOD is workout of the day. It’s a CrossFit thing.” The beverage itself is as satisfying as someone describing a beer over a choppy Zoom call.
Then there’s the cost; the man with the fridge stocked with Michelob — the guy who went to school where they proudly drink their corn from a jar — would like you to buy a $200 blended bourbon. For the same price as one fifth I could pick up four bottles of Old Forester 1920 Prohibition Style Whiskey or, if you’re more into peaty Scotches, three bottles of Lagavulin 16 (it’s Wisconsin. Booze is cheap. Bars outnumber churches). Esquire says it’s overpriced but also better than Scottie Pippen’s bourbon or Nick Jonas’s tequila, so … take that how you will.
Ultimately it’s probably a pretty good malt — it’s aged like a premium spirit and blended by master distiller Marianne Eaves, who most connoisseurs agree rules — that retails for twice as much as what it’s worth because a Hall of Famer called up your local liquor store, worked “Omaha” and “laser rocket arm” into a three-minute conversation, and found a spot on the top shelf where the Stagg and Black Maple Hill used to be. Every pour comes with a story about how this is “Peyton Manning’s whiskey” and how it fits equally as well on a golf course or in a hunting lodge in front of a roaring fire. It is a whiskey designed to impress your boss or father-in-law. It is bottled clout.
Hell, maybe that’s worth it for you.
