FEW Spirits announces the release of Motor Oil Whiskey, a new, limited-release collaboration between FEW Spirits Founder and Master Distiller Paul Hletko and modern rock icons Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, honoring the 21st anniversary of the band’s seminal debut album, B.R.M.C.
Motor Oil is scheduled to be available for purchase on July 1.
“I’ve been a fan of Black Rebel since the debut album came out,” said Hletko. “When we heard they were looking for a distillery to work with, you better believe we jumped at that chance.”
Said Black Rebel Motorcycle Club founding member and bassist Robert Levon Been, “We’d always joke around about how someday we should make our own whiskey called ‘Motor Oil’ that’s so painful nobody would be able to actually drink it. It would basically be jet fuel in a bottle, just pure pain. But then we met Paul Hletko and he said, ‘Yeah that’s cool, but that’s illegal’. So after brooding for a bit, Paul took the next year to properly school us in how it’s really done, dialing in what somehow eventually became a legitimate incredible whiskey blend, which is crazy, and we’re still mostly surprised we didn’t blow up the barn.”
Featuring label art inspired by the band’s logo, every bottle of FEW Spirits Motor Oil Whiskey (SRP: $60/750 ml) is a blend of three whiskeys: FEW Bourbon finished in rum barrels, FEW Bourbon finished in vermouth barrels, and a mesquite-smoked wheat whiskey. The result is full-flavored and complex – grassy and sweet from the rum barrel; herbaceous, bitter and vegetal notes from the vermouth barrel; and heavy mesquite smoke that evokes winding back roads, long stretches of highway, and pit stops at roadside barbecue joints of West Texas. The blend was proofed & bottled at a very rock n’ roll 101.
The arduous creative process, spanning two years and a global pandemic, involved sending samples to band members in points around the world, conducting blind tastings over video calls, tweaking flavor profiles based on band feedback, regrouping, and starting the process all over again until just the right blend was achieved.
Of the collaborative process, Hletko commented, “Creating a new whiskey is a lot like working a song – what are you trying to say? What do you want it to feel like? I was picturing riding on a motorcycle through backcountry roads and Route 66 – from one end of the ‘Mother Road’ in Chicago, to the California coast where the band began. But what does that sound like, and taste like, and what kind of feelings are evoked by that ride?”
