Bonded by Bourbon

When Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley first met on the set of “The Vampire Diaries” in 2009, they never could have imagined their bond would lead them to create a top whiskey.

After playing brothers Damon and Stefan Salvatore in The CW’s popular supernatural series for the next eight years, the two formed an inseparable friendship along with an on-and-off-screen shared bromance for the popular southern spirit.

That led them to their next role: creating Brother’s Bond Bourbon.

“The name is definitely a nod to the brotherhood we share for sure,” Somerhalder said in a recent phone interview. “These characters bonded a massive audience with their love of good whiskey. Whenever you saw these guys not wanting to kill each other was when they were sipping on a glass of whiskey. I’m from Louisiana and Paul is from New Jersey, but Paul fell in love with the spirit living in the south shooting the show. We blended the shit in my kitchen for over a year to get it right. It takes a lot of patience, and is very capital and time intensive, which is why people don’t last in the whiskey business.”

Realizing they already had an enormous reach with their on-screen audience, Somerhalder and Wesley knew they wanted to create something special.

“It’s more about the feeling you get when you look at the label,” Somerhalder said. “We need togetherness more than ever now. Brother’s Bond brings people together. It’s amazing for us to realize that people are sharing their experiences together whether they are in a bar or sitting at a campground. That’s what makes us smile.”

Since launching in 2021, they have three expressions to their credit: Straight Bourbon Whiskey, Cask Strength Bourbon Whiskey, and American Blended Rye Whiskey. The four-grain, high-rye bourbon is aged for a minimum of four years in virgin American oak barrels.

Brother’s Bond Bourbon Original Cask Strength has already won numerous platinum and gold awards, including two impressive Double Gold wins: one at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition just last year, and the other at the New York World Spirits Competition where it was a finalist for Best in Show for straight bourbon whiskey.

“I am working more and working harder now than I ever have in my entire life,” said Somerhalder, who also runs a health and wellness brand “because life is all about balance. Building the Brother’s Bond brand has been a massive undertaking. I just want people to know we’re dudes just like you. I’m busting my ass. It’s hard work. I’m a dad; I ride a motorcycle and shit but we’re also great whiskey makers.”

Wesley agrees that creating an award-winning bourbon has been an intensive labor of brotherly love. “Becoming a bourbon maker has been an incredible and rewarding journey, with some very hard work — truly blood, sweat, and tears,” he said. “We’ve been lucky to bring together some of the greatest people in the industry to create our Brother’s Bond Bourbon and have loved hearing all the positive reviews from our consumers on what Ian and I created.”

Somerhalder believes Brother’s Bond’s “immediate approachability, quality, nuance, and complexity” makes it stand apart from its competition. “We know it’s a well-crafted spirit,” he said. “You have to have two things to be successful and affect your consumer. You have to have a story and a quality product. You can have a great story, but if you don’t have the quality, they aren’t going to come back.”

In addition to producing an award-winning bourbon made from 100% natural ingredients from American farms, Somerhalder and Wesley have already made a name for themselves in the agricultural industry with their support of regenerative farming practices.

A portion of their proceeds are given back to support sustainable agriculture by safely transferring carbon emissions from the atmosphere to the soil to protect our natural food and water supplies.

“The future holds a lot,” Somerhalder said. “We have some new offerings in whiskeys and our regenerative whiskey that we are just about to launch. Ninety-four percent of the grains were grown using regenerative agricultural practices. It’s pretty special.”

Regarding tattoos, each has a special one that, of course, just so coincidentally happened to be designed by the same tattoo artist.

“First of all, this publication is badass, but I only have one tattoo,” Somerhalder said. “A tattoo is something people look at to remember things and to forget things. One of the things I realized even as a kid is we live in the past which is gone, or we live in the future that may never happen, but we never live in the present. I got a tattoo that says ‘hic et nunc,’ which is Latin for ‘here and now’ from tattoo artist Taka (Tamada) at Body Electric on Melrose.”

“I have a rose tattoo on my right shoulder that I got 15 years ago,” Wesley said. “I got it because it was a coverup of a tattoo I got when I was 16 years old that I grew out of as I got older. So, I wanted to create something that was timeless. I designed the rose with Taka Tamada who incidentally also did Ian’s tattoo. I really love it.”

Brother’s Cask Old Fashioned

INGREDIENTS

• 1 oz Brother’s Bond Cask Strength Straight Bourbon Whiskey
• 0.5 oz Amaro
• 0.75 oz Simple Syrup
• 2 Dashes Angostura Bitters

METHOD

• Measure all ingredients with a jigger and pour into a lowball glass.
• Add ice and stir. Garnish with an orange twist.

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