Beyoncé Just Launched Her Own Whisky Brand—Here's What Its Name Means
The Queen Bee has officially joined the ranks of the spirits world, partnering with Mo?t Hennessy to launch her own brand of whisky. The announcement came Tuesday, detailing the Grammy award-winner’s new venture by way of SirDavis Whisky. The brand's headquarters is reported to be setting up shop in Knolwes-Carter’s hometown of Houston, Texas and will be her very first experience within the industry.
SirDavis is actually a tribute to Beyoncé's late great-grandfather, Davis Hogue, who lived as a moonshiner and farmer in the South during the Prohibition years. As the story goes, Hogue would allegedly hide whiskey bottles in the empty knots of cedar trees for his loved ones to discover. Beyonce's team has crafted a whisky that, according to the artist, “respects tradition, but also empowers people to experience something new and unique in the category.”
“I’ve always been drawn to the power and confidence I feel when drinking quality whisky and wanted to invite more people to experience that feeling,” Beyoncé says. “When I discovered that my great-grandfather had been a moonshine man, it felt like my love for whisky was fated,” she continues, “SirDavis is a way for me to pay homage to him, uniting us through a new shared legacy.”
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SirDavis is technically classified as an American rye, but it’s Beyoncé's preference for Japanese whisky that gives it a special twist. The spirit favors the malted barley found more typically in Scotch and Japanese whiskies rather than the familiar use of corn which is heavily used in American distilleries. SirDavis is then finished, blended and bottled in Texas using a two-step aging process. The result is described as a “softer, more nuanced whisky” that has a “subtle rye profile” towards the back of the palate and “lingers long after sipping.”
The new whisky venture has been in the works for Beyoncé since before the pandemic when she first approached French conglomerate LVMH with the idea of launching her own spirits brand. Her husband, billionaire rapstar Jay-Z, worked previously with LVMH on his own champagne brand, Armand de Brignac. Mo?t Hennessy eventually chose Dr. Bill Lumsden to lead the project for Knowles-Carter—a man who is commonly referred to as the “mad scientist of Scotch whisky.”
While everything about this project is very new to Beyoncé, SirDavis surprisingly has already earned itself four awards before even hitting the market. The brand was anonymously entered into a handful of spirits competitions and even won Platinum and Best in Class for American Whiskey from the 2023 SIP Awards. A Gold Medal from the 2023 New York International Spirits Competition and a 93-point rating from the 2023 Ultimate Spirits Challenge were also earned by the brand, respectively.
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Bottles of the new whisky will retail for $89 and are expected to be available at select retailers across the United States, Tokyo, Paris and London in September. Pre-sale orders have already gotten underway at SirDavis.com, where visitors can shop for their first taste by way of an elegantly designed 750-mililiter bottle. The whisky is 88 proof with a mash bill of 51-percent rye and 49-percent malted barley.
Much like Beyoncé herself, this whisky is designed to “redefine the space” it exists in. “Everything about this brand is very new," global head of advocacy and blender for SirDavis, Cameron George, says, “This is the first American spirits brand that Mo?t Hennessy has ever launched and built from the ground up instead of through acquisition.” And while both George and Dr. Lumsden co-created the spirit with Beyoncé, the two are adamant that this is very much hers.
“We tasted all sorts of whisky. We tasted Japanese whiskies. We tasted Scotch whiskies. We tasted a range of American whiskeys. And we even tasted some Irish whiskeys. And at the end of that, we had more of a feel for what she liked and what she was looking for.”
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