“A brand founded by soldiers who rode literal horses into a battle after the 1800s. A metal label stamped from the World Trade Center rubble. Lord have mercy, is there a more ‘murica bottle of whiskey out there?” — Train3rRed88, Reddit
“How did 90 Green Berets defeat a 50,000-man Taliban army with all the most modern Russian equipment? We outmaneuvered them. We were unconventional in our techniques.”
Horse Soldier Bourbon co-founder Scott Neil is about two hours into a lengthy and boozy conversation with me at The Urban Stillhouse in Somerset, a picturesque town about three hours outside of Louisville, KY. It’s a few days before the bourbon brand, now celebrating its 10th year, opens up a multimillion-dollar distillery on a 240-acre converted golf course just outside of downtown.
Horse Soldier is opening on Fourth of July weekend because of course. Launched in 2015 by ex-military and special forces vets who served in Afghanistan (among many other places around the world), Horse Soldier is about the most rah-rah American company you could dream up. Founded by Neil, Mark Nutsch and John Koko, the whiskey brand has pretty quickly become a major player in the drinks world — which, in theory, is good news for an industry that seems to be struggling with finding new customers or telling new stories.
Let’s be clear: Horse Soldier is a fantastic story, but also one that caused me skepticism. When your company puts a national tragedy front and center (“The mission that began after 9/11 now stands firm in steel, stone and oak,” as their website notes), there’s going to be a bit of pushback. I’m not denying that Neil and his cohorts are American heroes for their service after the World Trade Center attacks. My concern, as a New Yorker who lived through that day, was that an awful memory was potentially being exploited for a line of bourbons.
Even the brand name is a reference to that terrible time in history. Days after 9/11, teams of Green Berets were inserted into Afghanistan, some on horseback. Dubbed the “Horse Soldiers,” their exploits were retold (inaccurately, as a few brand people told me) in the Jerry Bruckheimer movie 12 Strong and memorialized by America’s Response Monument located at Ground Zero in New York City.
I willfully ignored Horse Soldier for a few years. A part of me wondered if it was some sort of MAGA-coded branding, a weird brown spirits psy-op meant to polarize drinkers over party lines (which hasn’t worked out too well for any side). And will the next generation of drinkers and bartenders respond to a national tragedy/subsequent war they may not even have been alive to remember?
I set these doubts aside in June, when the distillery reached out for a pre-opening invite. I had just sampled a recent Horse Soldier limited-edition that I really liked (more on that below), and my mood had softened. And I’m all for engaging/arguing with spirits-industry folk who offer a different viewpoint from my admittedly elitist New York media hivemind. Onward.
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Years after founding WhistlePig, the brash drinks entrepreneur has found spiritual fulfillment in an ancient but little-known brandyThe origin of Horse Soldier Bourbon came out of a post-career restlessness. “My last position, I was in charge of all the agencies for counterterrorism,” Neil says. “When I retired, it’s the first time your family knows what you actually did, so they finally read you off the rolls and then you’re nobody — you take your little card and you fucking get your name back and you’re Scott whoever again.”
Eventually, Neil figured he wanted to start a business. “I didn’t know what I’m gonna do,” he says. “I can make backpacks. Think about all the Navy SEAL things they do, right? I could have fitness equipment. I can build trucks. I became fascinated about what it took to live the American dream. So told my wife, ‘I gotta see if I can pursue this idea of the American dream.’”
Neil himself wasn’t how to do that sure. But that changed after he and his cohorts, who had all left Special Forces (and post-government jobs) by 2015, took a personal trip to Yellowstone. “At the end of the 10 days, we went into Utah, and there was a small craft distillery called the Teton Distillery,” he says. “We had 10 days of hard cowboy grime on us and had a tasting. We had a potato flake vodka. Then a potato vodka. What’s the difference? Then we got into rye vodka. Now we’re learning. Then someone says, ‘Hey, would you like to see the stills?’ So we go back, and now it’s the first time you see the science of distillation. So we haven’t even made it back to the bougie rental house we had, and we actually Google where the next distillery is. For three weeks, we drove around the country just going to distilleries.”
Those weeks led into months, along with trips to Scotland, Ireland and, most importantly, Kentucky, a place where Neil was undergoing Special Forces training when the first plane hit the Twin Towers more than a decade prior. To make a 10-year journey short: After learning the ins and outs of the industry (like the understanding that you need a professional distributor), the team started contract distilling with Middle West Spirits and then Bardstown Bourbon Company. They were a hit.
“The growth of Horse Soldier has been organic,” says Neil, who also has no problem hyping the bourbon and downplaying his own role. “We’ve all been there every day since the beginning of every stupid decision we’ve made. Apparently, it’s kind of worked out, so why are we here now? It’s been 10 years. We built something that didn’t exist, and it’s doing really well.”
While plenty of recognition has taken place in the past decade — and even a few awards — Horse Soldier’s early forays into the drinks world have relied heavily on their unique backstory. The distillery in Somerset marks the beginning of a long next step: producing their own liquid and creating a tourist-friendly space in an area outside of most people’s vacation radar.
Welcome to Somerset.
My drive to visit Horse Soldier was disconcerting. For hours, I saw nothing except semi-barren strips of chain fast food restaurants, farms, tire shops, the occasional distillery, churches, liquor stores, Dollar General, Big Lots and some place called Captain D’s Seafood (“proudly serving wild-caught Alaskan pollock”).
But once I arrived, I saw the area’s charm. Pulaski County is beautiful, and thanks to a nearby man-made lake, it’s also a tourist destination that receives more than four million visitors per year, albeit primarily from surrounding states. By contrast, the Bourbon Trail gets a bit under three million.
Neil sees potential in the area to expand both of those numbers. And he’s using the distillery (which will offer local adventures) and the downtown restaurant to help. “Ole Smoky is the most visited distillery in the world,” says Neil, who has an impressively strong grasp on everything from distillery visitor numbers to the advantages and disadvantages of palletized barrel warehouses. “Why not Buffalo Trace? Why not The Macallan? Because Ole Smoky built these outposts. Our restaurant chain [Urban Stillhouse] is one way to casually build Horse Soldier.”
In person, Neil is a bit guarded but also down-to-earth and actually a little goofy for a guy who’s, you know, seen some shit. Dressed in a brown casual camo shirt and white pants, he plays up his past; he equates opening the distillery with “Taliban fighting season.” A waiter at the Stillhouse greets him with an enthusiastic “What’s up, American hero?”
His home tour begins with a visit to his office, where he regales us with a tale of how he ended up getting his portrait painted by one George W. Bush (it’s pretty good, actually). At our first dinner, we spent 10 minutes discussing raccoon penises, which is, yes, exactly what it sounds like but also a part of moonshine lore. Turns out a prank-loving ex-president and friend of Neil’s may like gifting them. Allegedly.
Neil can have fun with his image, too. He’ll hint at Area 51 secrets with a wink, drop old sitcom lines (“What you talkin’ about, Willis?”) and offer up a bemused cheer (“yeaaaaa”) when meeting new people. During the next two days, he shares his love of a hip-hop bluegrass band called Gangstagras (“I like weird things”), shyly mentions that half of the distillery roof is solar (“we’re trying to be hippies”) and makes jokes about whiskey terminology (“guy said bunghole sensor, I’m thinking alien probes”). In the midst of our first dinner — steak, naturally — he announces “no good story has ever been told over salad.”
During my time in Pulaski/Somseret, we engaged in a few activities you’d expect from an ex-military guy who runs a whiskey brand in the middle of Kentucky. We drove ATVs, went boating and shot a few guns (well, I watched people shoot guns — trying an excellent high-proof rum called Rekker that Neil used to make made me wary of picking up a rifle).
I liked Neil and a lot of my initial fears were quickly jettisoned. But how about the whiskey itself?
Horse Soldier’s best bottling is their most recent. Released to honor America’s 250th anniversary, Liberty is a 13-year-old, high-rye bourbon bottled at 100 proof and limited to just 1,776 bottles. If all of that sounds a bit on the nose, there’s more: Every bottle of Horse Soldier has been pressed by steel recovered from the Twin Towers.
It’s delicious but also costs $799. There are more affordable bottles from the brand, but it’s Neil who actually brings up the biggest obstacle with Horse Soldier. “Does the consumer really know what we taste like?” he asks.
My final night in Somerset is at the distillery, two days before its official launch. We have a fantastic catered meal and enjoy some private barrel drams. The distillery is lit up like the American flag, to no one’s surprise. “It’s lit up in red, white and blue because I fucking love America,” Neil says.
I’ve come to really like the whiskey at Horse Soldier, and there’s something for everyone: rye-forward bourbons, wheated bourbons and barrel strength releases. I also encountered a Horse Soldier Scotch at Tales of the Cocktail that was never mentioned on my trip and seems to have no footprint on the Internet; here’s a pic.
But what’s the political statement here? That was my last nagging question. “We are 100% apolitical,” Neil says. “We have hippies here that hate the current administration. I spoke at the RNC. [Co-founder John] Koko’s a hippie. I never voted until I retired. What makes me say I’m conservative is because I want to make what I got. I want to keep what I make. I’ve testified in Congress. I’ve done all that shit for all the leaders, from Obama to Clinton to Bush.” Kentucky’s democratic governor Andy Beshear was part of the distillery’s ribbon-cutting launch.
“If you ask my grandma, she’s a blue blood Democrat for the working people,” Neil adds. “I’m for the working people. I’m trying to keep every dollar I just made. Other policies of love, life, do whatever you want — I’m now in that camp. You be you, I’m gonna be me. You try to stop me from being me, we’re gonna have a problem.”
Even during what might have been a heated conversation, Neil is good-natured. I hug him before we leave. And I remember a conversation we had on the first night, after a few cocktails. We were about 20 minutes into a rather detailed discussion on Afghanistan, Iran and the general state of the United States when he pivoted.
“We’re drinking, aren’t we?” he said. “And now, of course, we all want to solve some world problems. Bourbon is a celebration of little victories, right? We’ll all here together.” Hooyah.
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