Rebel Yell is a brand of Kentucky straight Bourbon whiskey. The brand name is currently owned and marketed by Luxco, and the bourbon itself is distilled and bottled under contract by Heaven Hill at its Bernheim distillery in Louisville, Kentucky. Rebel Yell is bottled at 40% alcohol by volume (80 proof).
The W.L. Weller & Sons company was founded in 1849 by William Larue Weller, who pioneered using wheat instead of rye in his mash for a different flavor than the older style of bourbons. The W.L. Weller company merged with the Stitzel distilling company (est. 1872) to form the Stitzel-Weller distilling company in 1910.
The "Rebel Yell" brand was created for Stitzel-Weller by Charles R. Farnsley (a former mayor of Louisville) around the 100th anniversary of the original Weller company, with the idea to distill it in limited batches for exclusive distribution in the southern United States. This plan lasted until the early 1980s, when, after some other changes of ownership following the break-up of Stitzel-Weller around 1972, the brand was purchased by the David Sherman Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri (now Luxco). By 1984, Rebel Yell was distributed nationally.
Uses in fiction and art
In the novels of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta favors this particular bourbon (e.g. Book of the Dead).
In the extended edition of Stephen King's post-apocalyptic novel The Stand, a maniacal character dubbed "The Kid" has a fanatical taste for Rebel Yell.
Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones was once known to be an avid drinker of Rebel Yell. In fact, Billy Idol has said in his episode of VH1 Storytellers that his hit "Rebel Yell" was inspired upon joining Richards, Mick Jagger and Ron Wood in taking swigs from a bottle of Rebel Yell at a gathering they all attended. He liked the sound of the brand name, and said he recalled that he actually asked if they (Jagger and Richards) had no objections to his use of the brand name for a future song title. "I've got it now . . . little did they know."
In Dr. Dog's song "100 Years," the singer makes a reference to Rebel Yell: "When the sun shines down on what's left of me/About a hundred years from now/Gonna cut my water with Rebel Yell/And claw my way back to town."
In one of Norm Macdonald's final Saturday Night Live sketches, he hosted a game show entitled "Who's More Grizzled?" featuring Garth Brooks and Robert Duvall as two old men in a trivia contest to find out who indeed was more grizzled. The grand prize for the show was salted meats and a bottle of Rebel Yell.
William G. Tapply's fictional Boston attorney Brady Coyne's favorite libation, in more than fifteen mystery novels, was Rebel Yell.
Rebel Yell Bourbon is featured in the lyrics to "Honky Tonk Hell" a song performed by Webb Wilder on his 1995 album Town & Country: "One wife, two on the side; Too many stories I can't tell; Too much loss of memory; Too many bottles of rebel yell; One more night in a roadhouse; I figure I might as well; I know when it's all over for me; I'll be headin' down to honky tonk hell."
