A$AP Rocky Drops Newest Project: Mercer + Prince Whisky

March 24, 2022: Originally published in Forbes

For hip hop star and fashion icon A$AP Rocky, taste is everything.

Good taste, in the growing A$AP Rocky universe, now means more than sporting outfits that are obsessively dissected online, dropping streetwear capsule collabs with luxury brands and producing music videos that notch billions of views. With today’s launch of A$AP Rocky’s new whisky, Mercer + Prince, the height of taste is a vanilla-forward Canadian blend with baked apple spice notes and a warm toffee finish.

The New York rapper can now add spirits executive to his growing list of accomplishments. (Yet another title is also due soon, so to speak: The artist is expecting a child with longtime girlfriend, Rihanna, a successful multi-hyphenate in her own right.)

“I’ve always been a fan of dark liquors - cognacs, brandies and whiskies,” A$AP Rocky says, sitting in a booth at a bar in Manhattan’s East Village, on a break from an all-day video shoot for Mercer + Prince. “Whisky is a category I felt we could disrupt and change. I don’t think that [whiskies] really speak to today’s generation.”

His intuition isn’t wrong. American whiskey was the U.S.’s third top-selling spirits category by revenue and volume in 2021 ($4.6 billion in gross revenue in 2021, up 6.7% from the year prior), according to the Distilled Spirits Council of America. Canadian whiskies lag behind their American cousins, hitting $2.5 billion in U.S. sales last year, but with a 10.5% growth from the year prior, there’s a suggestion that the category is primed to be shaken up.

“When we broke down the subsets of whisky, we really didn’t see that there was a whole lot of innovation in the competition, and in exciting new propositions,” Spirit of Gallo vice president Britt West says. “We think we can breathe new life into the category. Canadian whisky has been dominated by two things, by lower-end whisky or one large player at the top. It’s time for some fresh thinking.”

“When it comes to innovation in the drinks industry, the bar is very low,” James Morrissey, founder of Global Brand Equities, echoes. “Rocky is incredibly intentional as a creator. He knows exactly the kinds of boundaries he wants to push.” Global Brand Equities, along with wine behemoth E&J Gallo, are the other partners in the Mercer + Prince venture.

What does spirits-centric innovation from one of culture’s top taste makers look like? Mercer + Prince is a smooth Canadian blended whisky that’s distilled in coffey stills, aged in ex-bourbon American oak and finished in Japanese Mizunara oak. Those international influences come to the fore in the name, a street corner in New York’s SoHo district famed for its intersection of art, culture and commerce. In the spirit of a sneaker drop, Mercer + Prince is available online as a pre-release today, before hitting retail stores later this summer.

The spirit also arrives in a distinctive bottle, designed to turn heads.

“You could lay it on its side if that’s what you want,” Rocky says, flipping his bottle onto the small bar table. He says he sketched his initial idea on a cocktail napkin a few years ago: A bottle framed by two clear cups at the top and the bottom, always ready made for celebrations and toasts. It’s a portable ritual.

A mold-breaking bottle is just the most recent iteration of his aesthetic. “I like the new New,” the artist says. “What’s the newest sound, what’s the new frequency we can tap into. What’s the new look, the new fit, the new cozy. Now it’s: What’s the new bottle look like?”

“This is a social kind of bottle,” he says. “This is a conversation starter. It’s appropriate for date night, for celebrations.”

Those built-in clear cups gave spirits executives several headaches. “It’s probably the most technical packaging I’ve done in my career,” West says, explaining that there is no room for error in the manufacturing of the edges of the glass bottle and the clear plastic cups. If either edge is off by one millimeter (the thickness of a credit card), nothing fits.

“That was part of Rocky’s process,” West adds. “You’ve got a moment to grab a consumer. There needs to be shelf impact, whether that’s at the bar or in a retail store, or if someone comes over and is just browsing by your home bar.”

Rocky, who landed on this blend after months of blind taste tests, hopes Mercer + Prince will have mass appeal. “It’s appealing because it’s sweet,” he says, taking a small sip. (He prefers to drink Mercer + Prince neat.) “If you enjoy sweet, this is definitely the elixir for you.”

“That’s all it is,” he says, holding up a tumbler of whisky. “As much as I love to talk about the duality and uniqueness of the bottle itself, it’s about the taste. Mercer + Prince speaks for itself. I just want people to taste it.”