UPLAND, Calif.—Adult entertainment power couple Joanna Angel and Small Hands introduced Doom's, their boutique whiskey brand, at a tasting and meet-and-greet at Liquorland in Upland Saturday afternoon.
"I love whiskey," Small Hands said. "I'm not going to put this much work into something I don't like."
"It's rock and roll," Angel said. "We're not making a vodka. We're not rappers."
The Doom's label declares "100 PROOF/100 PERCENT/AMERICAN MADE/RYE WHISKEY BLEND/NO BULLSH*T/NO APOLOGIES/NO EXCUSES" and the apostrophe in the Doom's logo is a skeletal hand holding a scythe. "The whiskey is cool, but I want everything to be cool," Small Hands said. "The bottles, the T-shirts ... I built my whole life making cool shit. If I'm behind it, you better believe every part of it is attempted to be as cool as I can make it."
Doom's is a blend of white oak barrel-aged corn whiskey and unaged rye spirits. "It's aged for two years in the barrel, which is why it took so long to get it out," Small Hands said. "It's more drinkable than any 100 proof I've ever come across."
The whiskey was developed through repeated taste tests and refinements over a year, Small Hands told AVN. "My master distiller would send me samples in small bottles like this," he said, displaying a screw-top bottle. "He would ship them to me—like a drug dealer. [laughter] All he wrote was 'American' on this one."
"This is not a licensing deal," Angel said. "We didn't slap our name on someone else's product. We have our own distillery, in Oklahoma. We own a little part of it. This is ours.
"Like starting any company, making your own whiskey is expensive. We decided, business-wise, it made no sense to make a cheap bottom-shelf whiskey. It wasn’t what we were interested in doing. The market doesn’t need another inexpensive whiskey. It's a boutique item. Not cheap, but not too expensive."
Doom's is currently available over the counter at selected bars in San Diego and San Francisco, and in selected liquor stores, including Liquorland. The DoomsWhiskey.com website has been launched and bottles can be ordered online for delivery in the U.S., subject to local liquor laws. MSRP for a 750 ml bottle is "$45-$50," Small Hands said.
Commercial wholesale distribution for Doom's is handled through Ontario-based liquor distributor 88 Spirits. "The whiskey is a really good blend," 88 Spirits president Hari Dhiman told AVN. "It's made at a small family-owned distillery, the presentation is really good, and the people behind it have a history and a story behind it. We specialize in boutique brands, and I said, 'Give it a shot.' We did that with our own tequila and rum."
Photo by Chris King/@ReelSeduction; click here for more photos.
