Meet The Man Behind Drake's Virginia Black Whiskey

When Brent Hocking was a 27-year-old Bank of America mortgage loan merchant in the mid-1990s, he got his first real exposure to alcohol. The newly-opened Rio casino showered Hocking and his high-rolling friends with freebies, including a bottle of 1961 Chateau Margaux that now retails for about $1,000.

“I was on a mission to get drunk, and I started drinking it out of the bottle like a beer,” Hocking recalls. “The casino host came in: ‘What are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘Drinking this wine. It’s pretty good.’ … He brought out some other wine, and the next night I was just picking them apart. I’m like, ‘Why is this one different than the other?’ All of a sudden, I was obsessed with it.”

Hocking quite literally stumbled into a career—it turned out he had a rare nose, and today, he has launched two beverages associated with Hip-Hop Cash Kings. He founded DeLeón tequila in 2009 and, after winning numerous awards, sold it to Diageo and Diddy in 2013. Now, he’s got a new spirit backed by a younger rapper: Virginia Black whiskey, the first liquor venture undertaken by Drake, who ranks No. 4 on this year’s list with earnings of $38.5 million.

As is the case with Diddy and DeLeón, Drake landed an equity stake in Virginia Black after putting his own money into the venture (“I wouldn’t have allowed it any other way,” says Hocking). It’s all part of the career blueprint Drake sketched for FORBES back in 2013.

“Every year, we just want to get more prepared and better at touring,” he said. “And better at things that make money.”

Sometimes that means taking an unorthodox approach: Virginia Black isn’t your grandfather’s hooch. Bottled up in a gold-capped container that would look more at home on your grandmother’s perfume shelf—or perhaps on the cover of Drake’s throwback-themed album Take Care—than at the local watering hole, the whiskey matches the aesthetic of Hocking’s Los Angeles office, which is replete with shag rugs and neon lighting.

Hocking has been in Southern California most of his life. He grew up as the son of a preacher in Compton, home to Dr. Dre, and caught on with Bank of America before taking a job that makes peddling liquor look like selling Girl Scout cookies: working for Countrywide doing mortgage loans in the early 2000s.

“I had the largest volume of anybody in the country and I just didn’t wear a suit,” he recalls. “I put up the numbers, so they couldn’t get rid of me.”

Hocking eventually made enough money that he didn’t need the gig anymore, and ended up getting out before the financial crisis decimated the company (which was eventually purchased by Bank of America for cents on the dollar and hit with all manner of lawsuits).

Hocking met Drake in 2011 as DeLeón was taking off, and the duo bonded over music, basketball and drinking. That’s when the idea for Virginia Black started to percolate. “If the women love it, the men will follow,” Hocking mused; Drake seemed a perfect conduit to attract both demographics. Around 2014, Hocking made his case to the rapper.

“Heineken will give you a million dollars,” he said. “But if you want to do this right—and you’ve seen what works and what doesn’t work in celebrity liquor—you’re going to have to be all in.”

Drake agreed, and Hocking started putting the machinery of Virginia Black into motion. Bourbon is a particular subset of whiskey, and to be considered as such, a beverage must possess specific characteristics: It must be aged at least two years and contain 61% corn. Hocking struck a deal with the distiller MGP to create a blend of two-year, three-year and four-year bourbons.

Hocking and Drake settled on its moniker not because of any association with the state of Virginia—its origins are actually in Indiana—or in honor of any particular lady. “The name is just to evoke kind of a sense of glamour,” says Hocking. “It’s just a sexy name.”

So far, so good: Mainstream critics seem to like it. People praised its smoothness, noting that “if you like making a face when you sip whiskey, Virginia Black is not for you,” while a writer from Marie Claire seemed to enjoy getting drunk on it. Even an insidery whiskey blog that dubbed Virginia Black “craptastic” commended it for not going the flavored-liquor route: “Finally someone has the balls to say, ‘Here, women, drink this—it’s whiskey.’”

Drake will be giving Virginia Black an additional boost this fall throughout his ongoing Summer Sixteen Tour, which will include VIP Virginia Black lounges and “some very cool branded stuff,” according to Hocking.

Now grossing over $1 million per tour stop, Drake doesn’t really need the extra income. But just as he has Views, he has goals. Among them: climbing the FORBES list.

“That’s pretty much my objective every year,” he once told us. “Other than making good music.”

He and Hocking will certainly raise a glass to that.

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