Frank August Bourbon Takes Whiskey Into Fall With Authenticity
Frank August was born over honest conversations and a dream. A timeless spirit, it is a new brand putting a contemporary spin on historic American bourbon.
Origin stories in the world of bourbon tend to begin in a distant past with someone’s great-great-grandpappy ginning up a recipe and passing it down through the generations. “A lot of those stories are beautiful, but a lot of them are complete bullshit,” says Johnathan Crocker, founding partner and CEO of Frank August bourbon. For the nascent label, honesty is key to the brand’s identity while romantic mythology as a whiskey convention is one they would prefer to subvert.
“We wanted the liquid itself to be the heritage story,” Crocker says. “We wanted every other touchpoint of the brand to look, behave, operate, and feel different from what you would come to expect with bourbon.”
New to the world, Frank August has only been on shelves for a few months. The brand was conceived by Crocker, a former denim and fashion executive for AG Jeans and BLDWN, and his partners, Thompson Harrell and Luke DiTella, over evenings on the rocks at The Bowery Hotel’s lobby bar. “It’s something we would casually talk about—how great it would be if one day we owned our own bourbon brand.”
After a while, the “what if” chats turned into material action items. And with a little lift, plus a few introductions from their unofficial consigliere, Willett master distiller Drew Kulsveen, the trio of neophytes began to bottle their dream.
The whiskey is sourced from a famous Kentucky distillery and blended to showcase the spicy nature of the high-rye mashbill. It’s a no-age-statement bourbon that is effectively a bottled-in-bond expression, meaning the spirit was aged at least four years at a supervised (bonded) warehouse in barrels filled during the same season by a single distiller, and bottled at precisely 100 proof. However, a non-disclosure agreement with the distillery prevents the brand from naming the specific source of the juice.
But even if they could, there wouldn’t be much space for it. The bottle’s contemporary design is beautifully reductive. The front features only the brand name, while all the details and legal disclaimers have been moved to a small paper label on the neck and on a clear sticker at the back that can be peeled off for an even sleeker presentation.
So where did the name come from? DiTella’s late father was named Frank, and August is the middle name of Harrell’s son. “‘Frank’ represents our past understanding, our heritage, where we’ve come from, and where we’ve been, while ‘August’ represents all our future ideas and aspirations,” says Crocker. “Traditionally the story of bourbon is told by looking back. We want to pay our respects and do that, but at the same time, we want to look forward.”
Gazing into that future, this fall the brand will release their first single-barrel offering as well as the first in a series of “Case Study” limited releases. Named after a mid-century architectural project to create inexpensive and efficient homes for post-World War II America, the collection will showcase experimental cask finishing techniques with less traditional flavor profiles.
If you distill the essence of whiskey, there’s no century-old recipe or fairytale origin story required. “I think what’s so beautiful about bourbon is it’s just wood, grain, water, and time. That’s all it is,” Crocker says.
