Whiskey has always possessed a special ability to draw people closer. It is a brilliant catalyst for conversation, bringing people together that might not ordinarily have common ground, while also providing the perfect vessel for heritage. For NASCAR Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney, the inception of his signature label, Ten Runner Bourbon, stemmed from conversations in the most natural environment possible: sitting around a table with good friends, enjoying exceptional spirits, and dreaming of creating something truly personal. “I always enjoyed bourbon… and it just kind of kind of grew from there,” Blaney recalls of those early days. “We got serious about it, and it was probably a two-year process from the first time we talked about it to actual, you know, product… And fortunately, you know, myself and Tony [Caponigro of the Sports Management Network] and a couple other guys were a part of it. We were all really on board with wanting to do it, so it was just kind of a roundtable discussion, and it grew from there.”
That patient approach was entirely deliberate. “We just didn’t want to push it out, you know, six months after we thought about it,” Blaney explains. “We wanted to do it the right way with good people… do our homework and research of what we want to put out there. We didn’t want to put anything out there that we weren’t proud of, so we definitely took the time to do it right. So I’m happy we did it that way.”
His colleague, Caponigro, echoes this dedication to the learning curve. “So what we know in our business is you got to have experts around you, and you have to have good people. And the more we, as Ryan said, just kind of started learning more and more… it took two years. Because we didn’t set out to be like, okay, let’s launch a whiskey tomorrow. It was kind of more of a learning exercise, and we’re like, maybe we can find something here. Maybe we can do something. You know, Ryan’s passion lies in the craftsmanship and the creation and the design and all those elements. So it was kind of fun to be able to do that. But I guess on the operations side, we had to go find people that could help lead us in the right direction.”
To understand Ten Runner and where it came from, it is important to understand the Blaney lineage. The name itself is a masterclass in personal history. “Ten is a Blaney family number,” Ryan explains. “My grandfather Lou started the family in racing in the late 1950s in the number 10, and it stuck. My dad raced it, and I raced it growing up. It’s our family number.”
The name also captures the spirit of the gatherings that inspired it. “A big part of the story is when we thought about okay, what’s the best way to enjoy bourbon? It’s, well, with your friends and it’s with your family and stuff like that, kind of all gathered around,” Blaney shares. “My family had such a big, you know, long history in the motorsport side that I really wanted to be a big family-oriented kind of thing. So that’s why we kind of came up with the name, the Ten Runner name.”
As for the “Runner” portion of the moniker, it’s a nod to the legendary, high-octane history of the sport. Long before modern superspeedways existed, the foundations of NASCAR were built by bootleggers during and after Prohibition. These “whiskey runners” modified their everyday cars to outrun the law, eventually racing one another to see who had the fastest machine. “The runner is an homage to those origins,” Blaney notes. “They created a path for what I’m doing today in NASCAR.”
Anyone that has been involved in some way with whiskey will be aware that developing a premium whiskey is a notoriously rigorous exercise in patience and precision, involving a lot of trial processes. For Blaney and his team, finding the exact flavor profile required serious dedication in the tasting room. “We went through a ton of different blends to get where we ended up,” he admits. “We probably went through, I don’t know… 20 to 30 different samples through that time until we finally kind of all agreed, like, ‘All right, this is what we want. We all agree on this one.’ So that was a fun time.”
Achieving that consensus required some brilliant blending behind the scenes. Caponigro explains the technical magic that gives Ten Runner its unique footprint; it is created using a unique blend of two different mash bills from two very different distilleries. “We’re non-producing, and so they’re two different aged barrels from two different places, and so... it’s complex in its nature. When you put it up against other bottles or other styles of bottle, it opens up and you’re like, ‘Oh, well, there’s something different about this one in a good way.'"
When asked about the defining step in crafting Ten Runner, Blaney doesn’t point to any one single technical aspect of the process. Instead, the ultimate realization of that hard work came in a single, visceral moment. “I think popping it open for the first time was a huge step. Like, this is actually real.”
At 103 proof, Ten Runner is unapologetically bold. This high-octane profile was a personal mission for Blaney. “I’ve always been a fan of higher proof whiskeys. You know, over in the triple digits, and that’s just what I enjoy,” he says. “And it’s not for everybody, so it’s like, ‘All right, do we want to go 103 proof? Because this might be a little bit too much for people.’ But... we got it to where it’s still the high proof, but it’s pretty smooth for the proof that it is.”
“For someone experiencing Ten Runner for the very first time, how would I break it down? I think it’s damn smooth for being 103,” Blaney says with a grin. “So I think it’d surprise people.” It has the power to satisfy seasoned whiskey connoisseurs while remaining remarkably approachable.
Ultimately, Ten Runner is about more than what is inside the bottle. It is about the connections made while sharing it. “Whiskey always brings people together,” Blaney says. “I want to help spur that on for other people.” Whether celebrating a victory or winding down after a long week, Ten Runner is crafted to be at the center of those unforgettable moments.
