Bob Dylan’s Heaven’s Door adds to Bootleg series

The rare collection of annually released whiskies comes in ceramic bottles that feature owner Bob Dylan’s custom artwork.

The sixth release in the Heaven’s Door Bootleg series blends straight wheated Bourbons aged for 12, 13, and 14 years, finished in Limousin cigar barrels. Master blender Alex Moore experimented with more than a dozen types of barrels before landing on the cigar barrel, named for its tall, elongated shape. “The shape of this barrel provides more whiskey to wood-to-surface contact, which yields more pronounced flavour notes,” Moore said. “Additionally, the Limousin oak is air dried over time versus kiln dried, which makes a big difference in terms of the tannins and sugars that are naturally resident in the oak.” The bottle for Bootleg Series Volume VI features Dylan’s Favela Villa Candido painting from his 2015 ‘Brazil Series’. The artwork depicts Brazil’s favelas and the community spirit that illuminates them, using textured rusted browns, ochres, and tonal greens and blues to evoke the style of Cézanne – one of Dylan’s favourite Impressionist painters. The whiskey is bottled at 60.58% ABV and priced at US$500, with fewer than 5,000 bottles available worldwide. The secondary finishing barrels impart notes of spice, dried fruit, and toasted oak, which balance the softer, sweeter notes of the wheated Bourbon. Heaven’s Door launched The Bootleg Series in 2019 with a 26-year-old whiskey finished in Japanese mizunara oak. Volume III, released in 2021, was a 13-year-old cask-strength Kentucky Bourbon finished in vino de naranja (orange wine) casks from Spain. The bottle art was taken from Dylan’s painting Sunday Afternoon.