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Dee Robinson grew up with the words of civil rights icon John Lewis firmly imprinted in her long-term memory, though she didn’t know it at the time. She first heard them from her mother.
“My sister Pearl, the oldest—if my mom told her to go right, she went left,” Robinson says. “Ten years later—surprise—twins were born. My mom used to say to us [that] the only kind of trouble we could get in was good trouble, because Pearl got in all the rest. But it was the late 60s. She was also teaching us how to show up in the world.”
It’s a story Robinson tells often: in interviews, in the 2022 motivational book Courage by Design, and on the back cover of her cookbook, Stirring Up Good Trouble, published the same year. She wears a sparkling, gold-plated pavestone pendant that spells out the word “TROUBLE.”
And now the words are branded on bottles filled with Kentucky straight bourbon, aged more than four years in new, charred, white-oak barrels—coming soon to a cocktail bar or liquor store near you.
Credit: Dimitry Loiseau
Stroll down the American whiskey aisle of your favorite well-stocked liquor store and every bottle has a story behind it—some real, most imaginary. Eyes glaze over at the old-timey fonts hinting at some venerable but vaguely rebellious early American distilling legacy, washed in bullshit-tinted branch water.
It’s all marketing, often disguising the fact that many of these bottles have been produced through contract distilling. There’s nothing wrong with that—distilleries have been making whiskey for outside clients since the dawn of the industry. But stating outright on the label that your venerable Old Daddy Barrelbilge originated in a massive 80-acre factory complex in southern Indiana rather than in your great-great-grandpappy’s cornfields might keep it from jumping off the shelves.
For a long time, it was a practice brands preferred to keep consumers in the dark about. Just ask Iowa’s Templeton Rye, forced by class action lawsuit to remove the words “Small Batch” and “Prohibition Era Recipe” from its labels after it was revealed their juice came from MGP, that Indiana distilling behemoth.
Robinson’s Good Trouble bourbon is also produced under contract, but her brand tells a different story. First, there’s a relatively uncommon degree of transparency. It states on the label that it was produced at DSP-KY-10, aka Owensboro’s Green River Distilling Company, Kentucky’s tenth oldest distillery. Its mash bill—the combination of grains used to make it—is printed on the front as well (70 percent corn, 21 percent rye, 9 percent malted barley).
What’s not on the label—though she planned to include it—is that she developed the recipe in collaboration with Jacob Call, Green River’s former master distiller, whose family truly has been making whiskey for eight generations. More on that later.
There is a lot more to unpack from Good Trouble’s label and bottle design, all meant to support a particularly uncommon story that Robinson wants to sell: that bourbon can be a catalyst for conversation, connection, and the kind of positive social change the late, oft-quoted Atlanta congressman meant when he talked about “good trouble, necessary trouble.”
None of this would mean much if the whiskey weren’t good. But it is. At 46 percent alcohol, it is shockingly smooth, satiny, and light-bodied, and you might be tempted to think of it as a beginner’s bourbon if it didn’t blossom across the palate with caramel notes and bakery spices.
“You can’t be called Good Trouble and be bad,” says Robinson, one of those broadly accomplished people whose range of experience and interests will make you lose your balance if you step a few feet back from her bio. “I knew we wanted to bring people into the category with something approachable from day one. A lot of people say they don’t like bourbon, because they had a bad first experience. I liken it to the first cigarette. Nobody likes their first cigarette. It doesn’t have that heat.”
She grew up in Cleveland with her twin brother, her sister, Pearl, and her mother, Helen Hill, who worked a number of jobs to keep the family afloat but who also loved to cook. Robinson picked up that passion, learning at her mom’s side, but she also absorbed her entrepreneurial drive, helping her roast peanuts to sell during Indians games.
But education was the priority. After attending boarding school in Massachusetts, Robinson studied economics at Penn, earned an MBA at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, then embarked on a corporate career that started in banking and ended in marketing at Leo Burnett. Through it all, she became an accomplished home cook in her own right, which gradually made her realize that her heart wasn’t really in her day job.
She loved to cook and throw dinner parties, and she thought her heart might be in the kitchen, but that wasn’t quite right either. A one-night turn as a guest chef at Charlie Trotter’s further helped her realize that she didn’t have the necessary passion to be a professional chef. What she really wanted was to be a restaurant owner.
Robinson struck out on her own, naming her company Robinson Hill, for her mother, and franchising a Ben & Jerry’s scoop shop at Midway Airport and then later at Navy Pier. She formed retail partnerships with Hudson News at O’Hare, followed over the next two decades by an exponential growth in retail- and restaurant-licensing agreements at airports across the country.
Today, at O’Hare alone, Robinson Hill operates outposts of Frontera Grill, Big Bowl, Intelligentsia, Tocco, Hub 51, R.J. Grunts, Wow Bao, and Urban Olive.
“I actually believe that many people would drink bourbon if they knew how to love it.”
The leap from airport restaurateur to craft distiller happened about nine years ago, when Robinson developed a liking for good bourbon at a tasting held by the Chicago chapter of the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs gastronomical society.
“I learned about the complexities of the bourbons themselves with all those flavors bursting into your mouth. I learned to trust my palate, and I really leaned in and started buying different bottles.
“When I decided I loved it, I was curious enough to figure out what it meant to be a craft distiller.” Robinson took courses offered by the trade organization Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, and she began to visit distilleries.
“I was fascinated by the operational side: How do you build a mash bill?” she says. “But also, when I decided that I wanted to make a bourbon, I wanted it to be bourbon with a purpose. When I started talking to different distilleries, if they didn’t understand that I wanted to find a way to bring more joy and equity in the world, why would I bother? I always knew I had a responsibility to give back.” Robinson wanted her bourbon to support a charitable foundation and do just that.
In 2018, she visited Green River, which opened around the turn of the 19th century but had lain dormant for decades. By then, it was four years into a comeback under Jacob Call. He and Robinson hit it off. “We connected on kitchens; my home kitchens and his kitchen, which of course is the distillery. He understood my mission for the brand and my desire to make the world better.”
Call began pulling samples from barrels aging in the Green River rickhouses, and Robinson began tasting, eventually narrowing it down to two that she took around to bars and sampled among her friends until the right one rose to the top.
She also designed labels featuring a Native American vision of Lady Liberty astride a raging bull, meant to represent hate, misogyny, and racism, superimposed over the gold-embossed motto “A SPIRITED CONVERSATION,” representing the idea that the lubricative power of bourbon could be leveraged as a tool to spark dialogue and overcome difference.
She also intended to feature her master distiller’s name on the label, she says, but not long after Green River launched its own whiskey, the distillery was purchased by Chicago’s venture firm Pritzker Private Capital, and Call left to build his own operation.
The transfer in ownership also postponed Good Trouble’s projected launch by about a year. The four-year age statement on the label is actually closer to five because of the delay. Robinson took advantage of the time by taking bottles around the country, racking up gold and silver medals at spirit industry competitions (winning a few bottle design awards along the way) and collecting florid tasting notes from judges that just so happen to integrate well into a marketing campaign.
“Clear light, amber color. Aromas and flavors of salted corn bread, caramel apple, creme brulee with chocolate powder and orange zest,” declared one. “There are pleasing aromas of caramel cookies, saddle leather, and baking spice on the nose,” ruled another.
But Robinson’s biggest challenge had been finding a distributor who wanted to take a chance on a small, fledgling brand. She eventually signed on with Elmhurst-based Maverick Beverage Company, covering markets in Illinois, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, and Texas. The official Chicago soft launch began last month, and right now you can find Good Trouble on shelves at Hyde Park’s A&S Beverages Wine & Spirits and Printers Row Wine Shop. They’re trying to get it into Binny’s before the end of the year.
Good Trouble Bourbon
Bars and liquor stores across Chicagoland
goodtroublebourbon.com
It’s begun to pop up at restaurants too. Chef John Manion is a fan, stocking it behind the bar at Brasero and El Che, where he hosted a four-course dinner with Good Trouble cocktail pairings last week. It’s also at Lettuce Entertain You’s Bub City, and the Drake is pouring an exclusive, almost six-year-old custom blend.
Meanwhile, you can buy it through Robinson’s site, along with Good Trouble–branded baseball hats and T-shirts and a line of jewelry signaling her intention to build the bourbon brand into a lifestyle brand. It’s in support of her Shine Your Light Foundation, which in turn will donate a portion of sales to, among others, the John and Lillian Miles Lewis Foundation, naturally. “We’ll be working with them to celebrate his 85th birthday in February,” she says. She’s also a golfer and a trustee with the PGA of America REACH Foundation, where “we are trying to bring more women and minorities in the game,” particularly through youth initiatives like the Chicago State University golf program.
Most of all, she’s trying to achieve those ends by flipping people who aren’t whiskey drinkers yet. “I actually believe that many people would drink bourbon if they knew how to love it. I think that I can expand the category by just bringing people into the conversation.”
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