(Johnnie Walker Blue Label Year of the Snake)
Johnnie Walker has partnered with visual artist James Jean for their 2025 Year of The Snake Chinese Lunar New Year bottling of Blue Label, a blended Scotch whisky made from their rarest and finest reserves. We spoke to Jean about this collaboration, the inspiration behind this year’s design, and what it meant to him as an American artist of Chinese descent.
“Like the intricate layers of flavour in the whisky, I aimed to create a visual experience with depth and complexity in my artwork,” says Jean, who portrayed the snake shedding its skin as a symbol of renewal and growth. “The three snakes symbolize the attributes of wisdom, intelligence, and intuition, while also representing the past, present, and future,” he says.
Jean is drawing on inspiration from an ancestral tradition that he has experienced at a distance, which brought up emotions that became part of the work itself. “For Lunar New Year, I have faint memories of celebrating it growing up on the East Coast in the United States,” remembers Jean. “We would make dumplings, and I loved receiving red envelopes, but growing up in the States, I felt disconnected from my roots. Now, as an adult, returning to Asia in my career, there’s a sense of belonging and a poetic sense of loss that gives depth to the work.”
(Johnnie Walker Blue Label Year of the Snake)
Jean’s intricate, metallic, and vividly colored snakes are a visual reference to cloisonné, “a Chinese art form used in decorative metalwork that became prominent during the Ming and Qing dynasties,” adds Jean, who was born in Taiwan but grew up in the U.S. “In the Chinese zodiac, the snake is seen as enigmatic, intuitive, and wise, embodying both danger and beauty.”
Likewise in his design, Jean says he wanted to celebrate the snake’s duality, “its capacity to enchant and threaten, signifying transformation, protection, and cosmic order––this duality and complexity also reflects the flavor and experience of drinking Blue Label.” Rich and complex, with a concentrated flavor of dried fruit and along finish, bottled at 46 percent ABV. $300