The Smashing Pumkins Collab with Chicagoland Neighbors, FEW Spirits, on New Bourbon

Evanston's FEW Spirits and The Smashing Pumpkins has announced the release of FEW Smashing Pumpkins Bourbon. The 93-proof bottling is FEW’s signature straight bourbon, aged four years, and cut to bottling strength using Midnight Rose black tea from Madame Zuzu’s Emporium, the independent, boutique tea shop run by The Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan and his wife, entrepreneur Chloé Mendel Corgan.

FEW Smashing Pumpkins bourbon is a singular experience. Bright aromas of rose water and ripe honeydew melon peek out above more familiar vanilla and caramel. On the palate, sweet and spicy bourbon notes, along with flavors of rose water, sandalwood, caramel, vanilla, and black tea.

Chicago visual artist Katelan Foisy designed the label for FEW Smashing Pumpkins Bourbon. Foisy has worked previously with both Madame Zuzu’s and the Pumpkins, including stage backdrops for the Shiny and Oh So Bright, Spirits on Fire, and The World is a Vampire tours, as well as designing interior album art for Billy Corgan’s solo album, Ogilala. For the FEW Smashing Pumpkins Bourbon label art, she drew inspiration from elements of vintage tea tins and labels connecting the bourbon back to Madame Zuzu’s, and merged them with Art Deco and Victorian design. In a nod to her decade-plus relationship with the Corgans, she included on the rear label the lyric “time is never time at all” from “Tonight, Tonight”, which is track four on the 1996 album Melancholie and the Infinite Sadness.
 
FEW Smashing Pumpkins Bourbon will begin rolling out at the end of May and continue through the summer, leading up to the release of The Smashing Pumpkins’ newest single. The whiskey comes ahead of and in tandem with the kick-off of the band’s North American tour featuring Green Day and Rancid. The whiskey will be available for sale in key markets where the US Tour stops, as well as nationally through the distillery’s online ecommerce shop.