Dierks Bentley has ushered in a new era with his brand new whiskey, ROW 94.
At a special event at Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row located in the heart of Downtown Nashville earlier this month (October 10), he pulled back the curtain on how ROW 94 came to be.
During quarantine, the singer dug into bourbon’s role in American history and country music. While toying with the idea of purchasing an entire distillery to join his Whiskey Bars, he ultimately made up his mind on to fashion a Four-Year Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey — unapologetically Dierks-coded — with the help of Green River Distillery in Owensboro, KY.
Looking back on this journey, the singer confessed his widespread interest into the birthplace of bourbon whiskey and his reasonings for collaborating with the historical Owensboro distillery.
He recalls, “During COVID, I really started doing a lot of it, which is stopping to smell it before you drink it. Sometimes you don’t listen to it, swirl it around, and you start studying the history of it, and I as a country music historian, dig into the music and I started digging into these people and characters in Kentucky and their stories.”
“Green River is what you’d hope a Kentucky distillery looks like. I felt connected to them. It felt like walking into the Station Inn. it’s old and beat-up, and there’s remnants of previous fires. It smells like corn, rye and alcohol, and the people there – I really connected with them,” he continues.
Bentley was quick to cite country music, especially Hank Williams Jr., as a significant influence for this new passion project, as well as how his father continues to shape his creative outlets through the use of his signature Thunderbird emblem on ROW 94’s label – the symbol of strength famously used on Bentley’s record Riser released after the death of his father.
“I started drinking at a young age. I started listening to Hank Jr, and Hank drank Jim Beam. I love Hank. So I thought I guess I’m going to be drinking Jim Beam from now on. I spent a lot of time looking at that bottle. I just thought about consuming it,” Dierks reveals.
“My dad loved to have a good idea. I mean, he left the house with a Dixie cup you know, he’d always have a beer in an old school Dixie cup. He would call and say, ‘I think it’s time for a good idea,’ and that was usually a beer. My dad’s been a huge influence on me and I grew up listening to country music in the car with them on the radio,” he continues.
“The Thunderbird means a lot to me. That’s the logo of the Thunderbird. It’s been on my album and now it is involved in the label,” he concludes.
Now, the “Drunk On A Plane” singer is the first to tell you that he doesn’t know a thing about what it tastes like, and he doesn’t pretend to know… but he’s confident on what he does know, and what he wanted for his product.
“I have no idea what it tastes like. I’ll be straight honest, I’m not gonna bullshit you on it. Like, to me, it’s either good or it’s bad, and I know what goes into it. I knew I wanted 94 proof because I like some bite, and that I wanted it aged for at least four years since that’s when it starts to taste best to me and I wanted to keep it within a certain price point. It’s a serious whiskey that doesn’t take itself too seriously,” he said.
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The gals at Celeb Secrets asked if there are any songs that he suggests that we listen to while sipping on our “Dierks’ Lemonade;” one of the speciality cocktails offered alongside a fanciful station with assorted fruits, flowers, and other whimsical indulgences to dress up our cocktails.
“That’s really good. Back in the day, when I was 17, 18, 19, it was a lot of country state of mind. There was a lot of Hank songs. You know, singing about things that as a kid that age I connected with. I’m pretty sure he has a song called Naked Women and Beer. [laughs]. But I probably shouldn’t have said that.”
He continues, “Now, the last time I had whiskey was at Pilgrimage Festival listening to Noah Kahan. I’m a huge Noah Kahan fan. His music goes down really well with a glass of whiskey.”
Dierks isn’t a stranger to whiskey songs. He goes on to talk about his own bourbon song, “Bourbon in Kentucky” and country music’s longtime history usage of the drink from some of the best writers in Nashville.
“I have a song called ‘Bourbon in Kentucky,’ it didn’t do that great, but there’s not too many bourbon songs out there, there’s a lot of whiskey songs out there, and I think it’s just the rhyme scheme. John Randall, he’s written every whiskey song. Or Jaron Johnson from Cadillac Three, you’re going to get whiskey. It’s not the first verse. It’s coming in the second. It’s a big part of country music in some way. It works pretty much with any song.”
ROW 94 is first available in Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, Colorado and Arizona, with additional states coming in 2025. You can purchase it nationwide at ROW94whiskey.com.
Be sure to let us know how excited you are to try ROW 94 by leaving us a reaction at the bottom of this post or by sending us a DM on Instagram at @celebsecretscountry.
For more Country news, visit CelebSecretsCountry.com.
