During the peak of the pandemic, Chris Stapleton would often awaken to find little unmarked bottles of whiskey on his doorstep. His bass player, J.T. Cure, would quietly drop off the caches of brown liquor at a few select houses, and later that day, Stapleton, Cure, and their friends would conduct blind taste tests over Zoom.

“That was our social activity,” Stapleton says. “It would inevitably just end with a bunch of guys cackling on Zoom, but it was fun.”

Stapleton didn’t know it then, but the tasting experience...