Chicago-based favorites The Smashing Pumpkins and Few Spirits have partnered on a tea-influenced Bourbon whiskey
The Smashing Pumpkins are teaming up with FEW Spirits to launch a Bourbon. The partnership between the band and brand is distance-influenced as the distillery is located just a “six-song metro ride” from Madame Zuzu’s Emporium–the boutique tea shop run by frontman Billy Corgan and his wife, entrepreneur Chloé Mendel Corgan.
The FEW Spirits collaborative Smashing Pumpkins release is made from the whiskey maker’s four-year-old, 93-proof signature straight bourbon, which has been cut to bottling strength using Midnight Rose black tea from Madame Zuzu’s.
“Whether you’re making music, painting, blending tea, or distilling spirits, you’re making art,” said Hletko. “As a Chicagoan, I felt a personal responsibility to match the raw, primal energy of the Pumpkins. Songs like ‘I Am One’, the opening track of the band’s first album, Gish, provided a ton of inspiration. Press ‘play’ and you’re immediately struck by these thumping, propulsive drums, joined seconds later by a tight bassline groove before crunching guitars kick in to round out what, for me, is such a signature sound. That’s the driving, yet symphonic quality we wanted to bring to this liquid.
The whiskey offers aromas of rose water and ripe honeydew alongside familiar notes of vanilla and caramel. The palate delivers sweet and spicy notes, along with flavors of rose water, sandalwood, caramel, vanilla, and black tea, all leading to a long, full finish.
Chicago visual artist Katelan Foisy designed the label and previously worked with both Madame Zuzu’s and the Pumpkins, including stage backdrops for the Shiny and Oh So Bright, Spirits on Fire, and The World is a Vampire tours, as well as designing interior album art for Billy Corgan’s solo album, Ogilala. For the label art, she drew inspiration from elements of vintage tea tins and labels connecting the bourbon back to Madame Zuzu’s, and merged them with Art Deco and Victorian design to deliver an overall feeling of a magical experience. In a nod to her decade-plus relationship with the Corgans, she included the lyric “time is never time at all” from “Tonight, Tonight”–track four on Melancholie and the Infinite Sadness.
FEW Smashing Pumpkins Bourbon features an SRP of $50 and will roll out at the end of May and continue through the summer, leading up to the release of The Smashing Pumpkins’ newest single. The whiskey will be available for sale in key markets where the US Tour stops, as well as nationally through the distillery’s official website.