Horse Soldier Bourbon is America’s fastest-growing bourbon company. We’ve won over 60 major awards and counting, despite the fact that we’ve been selling bourbon for less than 10 years. The reason for that is simple—we literally made the whiskey for ourselves. We like to joke that we make bourbon for ourselves and what we don’t drink, we sell. While that sounds funny, it’s actually the truth.
Made for Ourselves, Shared with the World
American Freedom Distillery is the actual company name, and we make Horse Soldier Bourbon. The company was started by a group of friends, most of us Green Berets, all of whom had worked with one another during our military careers. Some of us go back as far as the first Gulf War.
The Story Behind the Name “Horse Soldier”
It’s called Horse Soldier Bourbon because four of the Green Beret owners were part of ODA 595, the Horse Soldier team. If you want to know the story of The Horse Soldiers, you can watch the movie 12 Strong—a Jerry Bruckheimer film starring Chris Hemsworth. The movie tells the story well, despite some obvious Hollywoodisms, so I don’t need to go into that here.
A Mission Reimagined: The Birth of the Distillery
Reconnecting After the Military
Part of the reason we started American Freedom Distillery was to find a way to “get the band back together.” When we got out, some of us were doing pretty well and some of us weren’t. There are two big things that veterans struggle with when they leave the military: finding another overwhelming sense of purpose, and being around people who speak your language.
Finding a New Sense of Purpose
When you’ve been on missions that have literally changed history—where do you go after that? What kind of job can provide the same sense of personal fulfillment and gratification that you’re doing something important and helping your country? Once you retire, it’s tough to end up in a cubicle somewhere. So for Special Operations folks in general, having this sense of purpose is very difficult. Building a company together that can benefit our families for generations is a pretty strong purpose. Obviously, it’s not as strong as defending your country and keeping its citizens safe, but it’s right up there.
Speaking the Same Language
The other thing that you really miss is being around people who speak your own language. Pilots speak “pilot,” and within that, there are dialects because fighter pilots have a slightly different language than other pilots. Military police speak “MP,” and of course, Green Berets speak “Green Beret.” A lot of veterans, when they first get out of the military, think that they should probably move home—which can be the absolute worst thing to do. While it may be where they grew up, their lives are often very different from the people who remained there. It’s not that those people aren’t well-meaning or that they don’t care, it’s just that veterans don’t actually talk about their service all that much, except to other veterans.
If you want to hear the war stories, then go hang out with veterans when they’ve had a little bit to drink, and then the stories will start flowing because of the shared experience—their shared language. While we have our own dialects depending on our jobs and service, we all still speak “military.”
Building the Distillery: From Special Forces to Business
Starting Our Own Support Group
Building the distillery and starting the company was a way for us to start our own support group for each other. We have been able to use many of the skills and principles that we applied in Special Forces to build the business. It provides its own culture which now, as we grow larger, must become more corporate. But in the early days, it was literally like being back on a team of Green Berets because that’s what it was. Our mission was different, but it still felt like home.
Watch Our Story
There’s a video here that you can watch if you want to see a little bit more about what I’m talking about and why we started the company.
Forged in Fire: The Story Behind Our Bottles
Twin Towers Steel in Every Bottle
There is a common misconception that the metal labels on our bottles are made with steel from the Twin Towers. We would never make anything from that steel that you could throw away, so it’s not the labels themselves. Instead, the steel was used in the molds that we use to create the bottles. The steel was offered to us by members of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey because they own all of the steel from the Twin Towers.
The funny thing about making bottle molds is that you can’t just use any old steel. Most steel used in buildings nowadays wouldn’t be suitable. It just so happened that the steel from the Twin Towers was exactly what was needed. So literally every bottle of Horse Soldier Bourbon is forged in fire with steel from the Twin Towers. The molten glass is injected into the mold, and that’s how the bottles are made.
The America’s Response Monument and Our Logo
The Story Behind the Monument
We’re also often asked why we’re allowed to use a national monument as our logo. If you look at our logo, you’ll see it’s remarkably similar to the America’s Response Monument, which stands at Ground Zero in New York. The reason we’re allowed to use it is because, before it was a national monument, it was literally a statue of the team. It’s a composite of the Horse Soldier team, and the original version, called “The Horse Soldiers,” was slightly smaller than the version that now stands at Ground Zero.
A Story of Resilience
As they were creating the 9-11 Memorial in New York City, the builders realized there had to be a resolution to the story. Those who have been to the 9-11 Memorial will remember what it’s like to go down that long escalator. You descend down, down, down—and that’s purposeful. It’s like you’re literally descending into the depths of despair, and once there, everything is dark, and you read the stories of all the people who died. It’s terrible and heartbreaking.
But that can’t be the end of the story—that’s not what America is all about. We’re about resilience, so the story must have a resolution. As you ascend out of the memorial, you’re looking directly at Freedom Park, and there, on a small hill, stands the America’s Response Monument, a 19-foot version of the original, with a plaque that tells the story of how all of America’s forces avenged 9-11. That’s why we’re allowed to use a national monument as our logo.
Why is Horse Soldier Bourbon Different?
The Path to Profit vs. The Path to Quality
If you want to make a lot of money in the bourbon business, don’t do what we do—do exactly the opposite. To make a lot of money in bourbon, you use the least expensive barrels you can find and don’t give them much of a char. You’ll use the least expensive corn, which is rarely food grade—much less bee-pollinated. You’ll put it in the barrel at 125 proof because that’s what’s legally allowed, and the higher the proof you put it in, the more water you can add to get more bottles out of it. You’ll also dump all of your barrels for bottling at the 2-year mark because that’s the minimum for it to be called straight bourbon, and finally, you’ll add water to bring it down to 80 proof, the legal minimum, regardless of taste.
Our Bourbon, Made for Us
If you were going to make your own bourbon, you’d make it exactly the way we do. You might change the mash bill because you might like more corn or more wheat. But in every other aspect, if money was no object, you’d make bourbon like we do. We use only bee-pollinated, food-grade corn from the Midwest. We buy the most expensive barrels from the Ozarks because the wood has tighter pores, which means fewer tannins that cause bitterness. We put it in the barrel at 114 proof to get a softer, sweeter, better product, though this means from the very beginning we make less money.
Our least expensive bourbon, our straight bourbon, is aged 3 years because we honestly didn’t like it ourselves until it was 3 years old. And as Green Berets used to the highest standards, we simply weren’t going to put something into a bottle and sell it to you if we weren’t going to drink it ourselves.
The Char Makes the Difference
We also use a No. 4 alligator char, named for the way the charred interior of the barrel looks like alligator skin when it’s done. This, of course, costs more, but it provides tons of charcoal filtration while it’s still in the barrel. That extra filtration is an extra step in Tennessee sour mash, which is why you can’t refer to it as bourbon. But we do it in the barrel, so you still get all the same benefits.
Our Commitment to Quality and Heritage
A Product We Stand Behind
Plenty of people will try our product because of who we are and our service, but they keep drinking it because it’s a really good product. People often ask me, “So what other bourbons do you drink besides your own?” My response is: why would I want to drink anybody else’s? We literally make this for ourselves and our own palates. As a result, I’m probably the only producer in the world who can say I’m ecstatically happy to drink my least expensive product every single day.
