Hone and The Edge header logo
ian somerhalder brothers bond bourbon
Lifestyle

Ian Somerhalder Has Bourbon and Health Advice. You Should Try Both

We chat with the Vampire Diaries actor about his new bourbon and why he rigorously blood tests every few months.

Ian Somerhalder drank his first bourbon at the tender age of four years old.

“I’m from the deep South, and property lines around our home in Louisiana were sugar cane fields; they’re cheaper than building a fence,” the Vampire Diaries actor chuckles. “After church on Sundays, the adults would give us cane knives and we’d go cut down sugar cane and pick mint for them,” adding that the only sensible thing to do with these freshly harvested ingredients was to make mint juleps.

Surrounded by an abundance of delicious-smelling beverages, “I accidentally grabbed a cup from my grandfather and had some. Just kidding, I did it on purpose,” he quips.

Over the past four decades, Somerhalder’s affinity for the spirit of the South blossomed. Now, the 43-year-old actor has launched his own bourbon, along with his Vampire Diaries co-star Paul Wesley.

Dubbed Brother’s Bond Bourbon, the name alludes to the tight-knit relationship the two formed over the eight years they filmed the hit show. And while it may be easy to dismiss the duo’s offering as yet another celebrity alcohol brand, lobbed into an unnecessarily crowded space, the market begs to differ: it’s one of the fastest-selling bourbon brands in the U.S., shipping a staggering 50,000 cases within the first four months.

“Dude, it’s pretty insane,” Somerhalder says of his brand’s wild trajectory. Though he’d prefer to eschew the “celebrity” moniker attached to the endeavor—“Paul and I give each other plenty of shit about not being celebrities”—there’s no doubt the twosome’s combined social media net worth of 76 million followers supercharged the business’ growth.

Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley's Brother's Bond Bourbon
Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder

Decades of Bourbon "Research"

Bourbon has enveloped Somerhalder’s life. “I’m in my little home office now, out here in Malibu,” Somerhalder says during our phone call, “And I’ve got 60 or 80 bottles of bourbon in here. There’s a wooden crate full of our [forthcoming] rye, and a bunch of other samples and blends. When my four-year-old daughter [Bodhi] comes into the room, she says, ‘Daddy, there’s a lot of bourbon here.”

(Somerhalder is cognizant of not letting his daughter sample the wares, as he once did: “I tell her not to drink anything unless it’s in her special cup.”) 

His journey from aficionado to producer has been more than a decade in the making. “[Paul and my] characters bonded on-screen over bourbon,” Somerhalder recounts. “And we bonded off-set over bourbon. We blended Brother’s Bond in my kitchen and in my office for more than a year, morning, noon, and night.” 

Somerhalder and Wesley opted to source their whiskey rather than distill it themselves—“Building a distillery is 50 million bucks. Why bother?”—a common practice for emerging bourbon brands. So they decamped to Lawrenceburg, Indiana, where MGP Distillery is located. Priorly Seagrams, MGP is one of the largest whiskey producers in the world, with its liquid used for more than 100 bourbon brands. 

“These guys have been distilling whiskey since 1847,” Somerhalder exalts, drawing out the date for maximum impact. “They make the most unbelievable whiskies. We have the most amazing whiskey-making mecca in Lawrenceburg; I’m proud to use it.” Within those storied rickhouses and vatting rooms, they worked with the master distillers and blenders to source hundreds of barrels to blend together for the ultimate Brother’s Bond recipe. 

A Surprisingly Tasty Dram

Brother's Bond Bourbon

The four-grain mash bill is anchored by 65 percent corn and 22 percent rye, with the wheat and barley amounts secretly withheld. The resulting product clocks in at 80 proof, an alcohol-by-volume lower than whiskey snobs prefer, though it drinks like a far-higher proof, due to the high amount of rye. That low proof was intentional, Somerhalder admits, to keep the initial offering more accessible to the masses. 

Hardcore bourbon nerds needn’t fret, though. “We’ll never do another 80 proof,” he notes. “We have a cask-strength version coming out in May that’ll be between 115.7 and 118 proof. Our rye will be 92 proof; our Bottled-in-Bond will be 100 proof, and so will our 8-year-old, coming out soon. We laid those barrels down to rest a few years ago, at the top of the rickhouse. The heat and humidity up there helps the aging process, but it also increases the angel’s share [an industry term for the bourbon that evaporates during the aging process]. Those angels must be hammered; they’ve taken a lot of my bourbon,” he deadpans. 

“Those angels must be hammered. They took a lot of my bourbon.”

It was a labor of love to perfect the first product, evident by the time Somerhalder and Wesley spent doting over the blend. “Paul would come to my house and we’d geek out over blends until 3 A.M., when my wife [actress Nikki Reed] would kiss me and say ‘do whatever you need to, but that monitor will be going off in four hours when your kid gets up,’” he recounts. He’d cram in some sleep, arise with his child, and start blending again. 

“Paul would come back in the morning and I’d have six more blends ready, all in graduated measuring cylinders. My hair was always a mess, and I looked a little disheveled. Paul once told me I looked like Christopher Llyod in Back to the Future, minus the lab coat.” 

The success of these sessions is apparent in the glass. For those wondering how Brother’s Bond tastes, it’s rather delicious. Hints of sweet fruit and baking spices arise on the nose, while a sip first leaves sweetness from the corn swirling around your mouth. That transitions into a rich, spicy finish, thanks to the high-rye. It’s an enjoyable glass neat, and the rye finish softens with an ice cube, for those seeking a more mellow dram. 

As a journalist who’s spent the past decade covering whiskey, I can say it’s an admirable first product, particularly for the $35 MSRP price point. It’s arguably the best bourbon brand that’s “celebrity-owned”—apologies, Ian!—that I’ve sampled. All the tinkering, sampling, and 7 A.M. tastings have paid off in spades. 

"What We Put In Our Bodies Matters"

Somerhalder’s zealous pursuits extend beyond his bourbon. He enthusiastically brings up regenerative farming and agriculture a dozen times during our hour and a half conversation, claiming the status quo of “sustainability” is no longer going to be acceptable—“We’re skyrocketing past all these benchmarks. We have to do better.”

He executive produced a documentary about a solution to climate change, through regenerative agriculture, entitled Kiss The Ground. Accordingly, he’s got a lot of thoughts about the relationship between what we eat, how it’s produced, and how our bodies feel. 

The latter was directly affected when his personal health took a dramatic nosedive following a stressful period in his life that saw him getting admitted to the hospital four times in two years.

“Man, I nearly died,” he says, a somber pall settling over our chat. 

“I had hypertension, pulmonary emboli, full panic exhaustion at one point, almost fatal blood clots. And more. When you get that close to the end; when you realize you’re not immortal and in your 30s anymore, you have to pay attention.” 

A botched investment deal went belly-up, leaving Somerhalder in eight-figure debt and under a mountain of stress. “I went upside down. Thank god my wife is a genius and we fought tooth and nail together to work our way out of it. But I was in and out of the hospital the whole time.” 

As someone who runs full speed at any undertaking, Somerhalder gained perspective upon reflection. “We’re trashing our bodies during our lives, thinking we’re getting a lot of output from our bodies,” he muses. “Really, we’re just spinning our wheels and not taking care of ourselves. The only way to take care of yourself is to know what’s happening in your body. You won’t live a full life if you don’t.” 

Ian Somerhalder Brother's Bond

"You Have to Test Yourself"

He rigorously blood tests his entire body at least four times a year, checking everything from his testosterone levels to his food sensitivities. “Blood panels and hormone panels are the only way to truly know what’s happening to you as you age,” he says. 

Akin to his mission to reimagine agriculture, Somerhalder would love to revamp elements of modern healthcare, too. “It sucks because your insurance won’t cover [these tests]; insurance is there to keep you just healthy enough. They’re not going to pay for preventative medicine.” 

“In ancient China, you paid your doctor to keep you healthy. If you got sick, your doctor treated you for free, because he had failed to keep you healthy. Imagine if we had a system like that here? Until then, you have to step up and [test] yourself.” 

Test Your Hormones, Too

Take a page out of Ian’s playbook and test your hormones with Hone’s at-home assessment kit. Ready to know what’s happening inside your body?

One of the more surprising revelations as a result of routine testing was Somerhalder’s allergy to pineapple. “A lot of foods you’re sensitive to are things you eat every day. In Hawaii, while shooting Lost, I ate pineapple and sashimi-grade tuna. I ate that for 18 months straight.” 

“And every time I’d eat, I’d break out in head-to-toe hives after. Not great for production,” he laughs. “Turns out, a test showed that I was allergic to pineapple. My body finally just had enough of eating it. Also, I was so overloaded with heavy metals from all that fish.” 

Prepping for their child, Somerhalder and Reed began testing their blood and hormones about six years ago. “When you’re acting, you’re exposed to a lot of bad things on sets, chemicals, mold, and more. All this crazy stuff was showing up in my blood, and I wanted to clean it out.”

“Along the way, my wife and I learned we both carried a methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase gene variant.” The MTHFR gene, Somerhalder explains, is largely responsible for how your body processes folate, which you need to make DNA and modify proteins (more on that mutation here from the CDC). He continues claiming that 30 percent of people in the world have this MTHFR gene mutation, a scientifically-backed statistic, but that chunk of the populous doesn’t know it as “giant medical companies won’t test for this stuff, man.” 

Change—and Feeling Better—Starts With How You Live

“If you have a MTHFR gene mutation, you can’t digest methylated vitamins,” Somerhalder says. “They pile up and become toxic. It’s how we end up with people spending millions on supplements that don’t actually help them because those supplements aren’t actually bioavailable.” 

“As our bodies work, we’re burning through Vitamin C. People with the worst diets may burn through 90 milligrams of Vitamin C per hour. At the end of the day, that’s a deficit. Your body uses minerals to process sugar; the more sugary stuff you eat, the more you’re processing and the bigger that mineral deficiency becomes. Disease and other negative things stem from these deficiencies.”   

The ease at which Somerhalder speaks about these concepts, with medical terms and study statistics rolling off his tongue as plainly as any doctor, is as impressive as his bourbon. While rattling through his beliefs and findings, his statements are bookended with a casual “dude” or “you know what I mean, brother?” These juxtapositions mirror Somerhalder’s persona: laid back until he’s fired up about something that he cares about, at which point he will breathlessly share all the exhaustive knowledge he’s soaked up. 

For those who want the ultimate level of buy-in, Somerhalder will have you covered next year when he launches a drink mix nutraceutical composed of vitamins and minerals that he’s used to keep himself energized and moving. After spending nearly four years on the formulation, Somerhalder’s recently launched his brand in China and will bring it to America early next year.   

 “It’ll be the easiest to ingest, the most bioavailable, and I’m keeping costs down to keep it accessible to all,” he concludes. 

“We can change how we feel,” Somerhalder says. “A lot of people don’t recognize that how they feel is a direct result of how they live. Think of those studies finding microplastic in the lungs. That’s fucking crazy. With a bombardment of microplastics in our bodies, broken food chains and water systems like in Flint, Michigan, low exercise, younger people being more sedentary than ever before; it’s really a gnarly tsunami building up. These things affect our health and will affect our health in the future. We need to start replacing bad habits and systems with better ones.” 

We’ll drink to that, Ian.

Test Your Hormones, Too

Take a page out of Ian’s playbook and test your hormones with Hone’s at-home assessment kit. Ready to know what’s happening inside your body?

Finding My Edge: The One Thing…

What’s the one thing you wish you knew about staying healthy and fit in your 30s? 

That it doesn’t last forever. What you do to yourself now, you’ll pay for later. Create balance. Eat a healthy diet and exercise, limit your plastics and chemicals; these things will make your brain happier with dopamine. If you have a lot of caffeine during the week, get off it on the weekend. Get into transdermal vitamins, like B12. Use vitamin compounds to make up for draining your adrenal health.

What’s the one thing you always have to do when working out? 

Before I work out, I eat lean protein and nuts, a handful of each. And I have an alkaline green juice drink with no sugar. That can help with glycogen production, which is essential for good muscle health. 

What’s the one thing you always have in your fridge? 

A tremendous amount of beautiful, organic, regenerative vegetables. We grow our own food, and also source from amazing farms around us. Our fridge looks like a magazine article, chock full of super organic yummy foods. 

What’s the one thing you have every day? 

Coffee blended with coconut oil. Attaching the caffeine molecule to a lipid helps with digestion. 

What’s your one unhealthiest habit?

Not sleeping enough. While blending Brother’s Bond, I was averaging between three and five hours of sleep per night. I did that for two years. 

Like a vampire, you don’t age. What’s the one secret to your skincare regimen? 

Olive oil. It’s got so many great regenerative qualities. I’ll take it from the kitchen, and pour a little into my hands and rub it all over my face and hair. The olive oil has to be unrefined.  Not too much, either. I learned if you have too much oil on your eyelids, it makes your eyelids heavy and sticky, which triggers your body to go into sleep mode.

hone health logo black

RELATED