JJ Grey, A Florida Music Staple, Finds New Creative Ground in a Bourbon Built with St. Augustine Distillery.

June 16th, 2026

JJ Grey does not talk about music like a man chasing applause. He talks about it more like something cooking low and slow on a family stove, where lifting the lid too often ruins the magic.

For Grey, the goal is not to perform at people. It is to let the music break out, move through the band, move through the crowd and become something larger than the stage itself. That same instinct sits at the center of Florida Colonel, his second bourbon collaboration with St. Augustine Distillery.

It would be easy to treat Florida Colonel like another celebrity bottle, slap a famous name on the label and let collectors do the rest. That is not what this is. The spirit feels closer to one of Grey’s songs, shaped by place, memory, grit, patience and the kind of Florida identity that does not need to wave a flag because it already has dirt under its fingernails.

“I just want to share an honest moment,” Grey said when talking about what he hopes people feel at his shows. “I don’t want to perform at people. I frankly don’t even want to perform at all. I just want music to break out.”

That approach carries over to the bottle. Florida Colonel is less about image and more about feel. Grey sat down with the team at St. Augustine Distillery, talked through what worked, what needed to shift and what he wanted the second release to become. The first collaboration, Rolling Rooster, helped establish the relationship. Florida Colonel deepens it.

“Whiskey is just like anything,” Grey said. “It’s got a recipe, but any little thing can change it so drastically.”

For the second round, Grey wanted the profile to move in a smoother direction. He described the first release as having a touch more of a scotch-like quality, while Florida Colonel needed a little more sherry character, a little more sweetness, but never enough to drift into dessert territory. He wanted balance. He wanted something with warmth, weight and a finish that lingered without overstaying its welcome.

Credit: Jaden Mendoza

The blend that kept calling him back was a 70 to 30 combination, pairing Kentucky bourbon with Florida bourbon from St. Augustine Distillery. Grey sampled different versions and different proofs, but the full-strength option kept winning. In a funny twist, he found that the higher proof came across smoother to him, not harsher.

“Every time I came back to it, it kept winning,” Grey said.

From the distillery side, the collaboration did not appear out of nowhere. JJ Grey has been part of St. Augustine Distillery’s story for years, long before Florida Colonel had a name or a pour. Inside the distillery office, there has long been a framed photo from the first cane harvest dating back to the early days of the company. Grey is there in the middle of it, standing near the former CEO after performing at the event.

In other words, he was not brought in as a marketing idea. He was already on the wall.

Over time, the idea began floating around the distillery that they should do something with him. The connection made too much sense. Grey is Florida through and through. St. Augustine Distillery proudly leans into its own Spirit of Florida identity. The collaboration was not a stretch. It was more like finally noticing the song that had been playing in the room the whole time.

During the first collaboration, the distillery worked with Grey to understand what he liked. He may not consider himself a bourbon connoisseur, but he knows what lands with him. That mattered more. He gravitated toward barrels with root like cinnamon notes and a toasted profile carrying marshmallow sweetness. Those elements helped shape Rolling Rooster.

Florida Colonel, however, pushed the distillery into new territory. After Grey was named an honorary Kentucky Colonel, he began thinking about a spirit that would pull Kentucky and Florida into the same conversation. For St. Augustine Distillery, that meant considering something they had not done before: bringing in bourbon from another place and blending it with their own Florida product.

They sourced Kentucky barrels, married them with the toasted profile of their own bourbon and worked toward the middle ground that Grey was chasing. Four different blends were presented. One kept bringing him back.

“I knew early on that when he took the second sip of it, before he even got to some of the others, that was going to be the one,” the distillery shared. “He really loved it, and that’s exactly what’s in the bottle.”

Credit: Jaden Mendoza

There is something fitting about Grey creating a bourbon by blending worlds, because that is also how his music seems to breathe. His songs have never lived comfortably inside one genre. They carry country storytelling, swamp soul, blues ache, funk movement, Southern rock muscle, church heat and punk energy, all without sounding like they are trying to impress a playlist algorithm.

Grey traces that openness back to the sounds around him growing up. His father played a giant Grand Ole Opry eight track box set. His sister brought in disco 45s from artists like the Bee Gees and The Main Ingredient. Lynyrd Skynyrd entered the picture as a Christmas gift. His mother listened mostly to classical music in the car. Skateboarding introduced him to punk and hardcore. School and community brought him into contact with funk, soul and the Commodores.

All of those sounds still swirl around in his head.

“I don’t really think about it,” Grey said. “I just do music, and wherever it lands, it lands.”

That sense of not forcing the moment is a recurring theme with Grey. He prefers collaborations that happen naturally, especially when someone is standing side stage, caught up in the moment, and gets pulled into the music because the timing feels right. The overly planned “spontaneous jam” is where trouble starts.

“If I’ve got time to think about it, we may be in trouble,” he joked.

That looseness is also why his concerts can feel less like shows and more like shared weather systems. There are party moments, sad moments, happy moments and beautiful moments that drift into something almost orchestral. Grey wants the whole story to unfold on its own. Fans respond to that because it feels lived in, not lacquered over.

The distillery sees that same authenticity in him away from the stage.

“Most musicians, their onstage presence is very different from who they actually are, but JJ, it’s not that at all,” Ric deMontmollin of the St. Augustine Distillery shared. “The guy that you see on stage is exactly the guy that he is off the stage. He is authentic through and through. He’s Mr. Florida.”

Credit: Jaden Mendoza

Florida Colonel also seems to have opened creative doors for St. Augustine Distillery. While the company remains rooted in Florida ingredients, Florida distillation and the terroir of the state, this blend showed that going beyond state lines can create new flavors without abandoning identity. Sometimes, honoring home means knowing what to bring back to the table.

The distillery described the project as a learning experience and admitted the Kentucky barrels were impressive. That may be the bigger point of Florida Colonel. It is not Kentucky taking over Florida, or Florida pretending Kentucky is not part of bourbon’s mythology. It is a handshake. Or maybe more accurately, a porch pour.

When asked what three JJ Grey songs would belong on the soundtrack for someone’s first sip of Florida Colonel, Grey chose “Lochloosa,” “Rooster” and “Top of the World.” In his mind, “Lochloosa” represents the woodiness and flavor of the barrel. “Rooster” carries the zip, zing and bubbling energy of the mash. “Top of the World” becomes the finish, that smooth fading note after everything has settled.

That answer may be the cleanest bridge between Grey the musician and Grey the bourbon collaborator. He does not separate the creative process into neat little boxes. Songs age. Whiskey ages. Both change after they leave the person who made them. Both can reveal meanings the creator did not fully understand at the beginning.

Grey spoke about how many of his songs have shifted meaning over time. The ones that came through him naturally, the ones that felt like they wrote themselves, often became deeper years later. Looking back, he realized some of them were telling him to wake up, step out of his head and truly experience the world.

“The songs were telling me to do that over and over and over again,” Grey said.

That kind of reflection does not sound far removed from the patience of a barrel. You make your best effort, put it away and let time do what time does. deMontmollin described whiskey making in similar terms, joking that good distillers have to live in the future and have a poor memory. You cannot obsess over one barrel for five years. You do the work; let it rest and return when it is ready to speak.

Florida Colonel is currently available online through the distillery’s retail shop for those in eligible shipping states. Earlier, fans also had the chance to attend an in-person presale event at the distillery, meet Grey and have bottles signed. For St. Augustine Distillery, the partnership is already carrying the brand into new places, including festival opportunities outside Florida that might not have happened without Grey’s reach.

As for whether there will be a third bottle, nothing has been officially set. Still, nobody seems ready to close the book.

“He’s a real creative dude,” deMontmollin shared. “I bet somewhere in the back of his mind he’s already got plans on number three.”

Until then, Florida Colonel stands as a fitting second chapter, one that tastes like a conversation between front porch Florida and bourbon country tradition. It carries heat, sweetness, wood, memory and just enough danger to make it interesting.

Asked what Florida Colonel would be like if the bottle came to life backstage before a show, Grey did not hesitate long. He said he would not trust it to introduce him.

Its personality?

Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday from Tombstone.

Honestly, that checks out. Smooth enough to charm the room. Hot enough to start trouble. Florida enough to mean it.