Lola Rugula

My husband and I are big Bob Dylan fans so last fall when I read that Dylan had collaborated in creating Heaven’s Door whiskeys and bourbons, I knew I had to buy some for my husband for Christmas. This idea was actually in keeping with a previous gift that I bought for him, which was a rye whiskey from Few Spirits where the artist who does work for The Flaming Lips (another favorite of my husband’s) did artwork for the cover of the whiskey they developed in tandem with them.

For the record, I think I like the Few Spirits/Flaming Lips whiskey better than my husband did; it’s kind of a spicy blend of flavors and it makes for a mean hot toddy with a little lemon and honey. I’m not sure my husband was nearly as impressed as I was.

So, this past Christmas, I called our local shops to try and track down the $150 limited edition 10 year Tennessee Straight Bourbon but, while I was able to find the less expensive Heaven’s Door spirits, this one evaded me so I ended up ordering it online via Reserve Bar. Well, apparently, Reserve Bar was a bit overloaded with orders this past holiday season and it became obvious that my gift was not going to arrive on time. What’s a girl to do but wander out and buy the next-best Heaven’s Door spirit, which was the Heaven’s Door Straight Rye Whiskey, which I purchased for around $70. If you’re still with me here, yes this means I bought my husband 2 bottles of Heaven’s Door but this ultimately ended up being a great tasting experience.

Here is where I should probably mention that I’m a lover of all things cocktail glassware. Throughout the years I’ve amassed quite the collection of martini glasses, wine glasses, margarita glasses, hurricane glasses, fishbowl glasses, etc. Some of you may understand where I’m coming from. So, I’ve had my eye on these very cool handblown Nip Tumblers from Crucial Detail, who make a number of glassware and serving pieces for Grant Achatz’s Chicago restaurant, The Aviary. What better reason to indulge in purchasing these tumblers than Heaven’s Door bourbon and whiskey? None, I tell you.

These tumblers are beautiful works of art, as is the cover art for the Heaven’s Door bottles. As I mentioned, the tumblers are hand-blown glass and the cool thing about them is that they roll. That’s right, they roll. They roll around a bit, letting you swirl the contents of the glass, but there’s a nub of glass at the bottom of the tumbler that keeps it from just rolling around wildly. The Nip Tumblers are available in 2oz, 4 oz, and 7oz sizes – the ones that I bought, pictured here, are the 7oz size.

While I’d love to give you a lengthy, in-depth review of both the bourbon and the whiskey, I have to confess that I’m a not a real connoisseur of either; I know what I like and what I don’t like and to me, these are both quite good. The really funny thing about this entire tale is that my husband actually ended up loving the less expensive whiskey over the more expensive limited edition bourbon, which means I probably could have saved myself a lot of frustration in trying to procure the more expensive bottle. So it goes.

Ultimately, we are in love with the Nip Tumblers and both the bourbon and the whiskey that we fill them with. The artwork on the Heaven’s Door bottles are ironwork sculptures that Dylan himself creates so, if you haven’t checked any of this out, you probably should.

Cheers!