Dewars Blended Scotch Whisky | John Dewar & Sons.Casamigos | George Clooney & Rande Gerber.Calirosa | Adam Levine & Behati Prinsloo.Black Whiskey | Don Michaels Andean Black Corn Whiskey.“We love working with 100 percent corn whiskeys because they throw so much funk and sweetness into the mix-with this stuff, you could easily convince a rum drinker to come across to the whiskey side. “Corn doesn’t carry a massive amount of grain character through maturation, but it retains sweetness, and coupled with the flavors of the oak it gives us a whiskey that’s light and mellow while still being rich,” he explains. On the other side of the country, in Melbourne, Ben Bowles and his partners at The Gospel occasionally release limited bottlings of aged moonshine alongside their signature Australian ryes. Western Australia’s Whipper Snapper Distillery, for example, uses locally grown corn for its Upshot 80 percent corn whiskey matured in virgin white oak, with limited-edition bottles aged in virgin European oak and used Pedro Ximénez sherry casks. Mexico has at least two brands dedicated to corn whiskey-Abasolo and Sierra Norte-which is perhaps unsurprising, as corn was first domesticated by Indigenous people around 9,000 years ago in what is now Mexico.Īs far away as Australia, a country with its own booming craft whiskey scene, corn whiskey is part of the growing grain-to-glass trend. “By choosing to make our bourbon from 100 percent corn, we give our customers an opportunity to discover what that pure grain has to offer.”Įven outside of the United States, corn whiskeys are a burgeoning category. “We believe there is power in provenance,” says Shelley Sackier, director of distillery education for Reservoir. Each of their rye, wheat and corn whiskeys are made with 100 percent of their base grain, uncut and unadulterated. Reservoir Distillery in Richmond, Virginia, shares High Wire’s approach to letting grains speak for themselves. “It has a ton of starch, which tends to translate to a soft graham texture and flavor, and also contains cinnamic acid, which ends up translating into baking spice flavors.” Now grown in partnership with Clemson University, the Jimmy Red corn used by High Wire lends a signature profile that they describe as “nutty, sweet and mineral, with an extremely high oil content that provides an unusually creamy mouthfeel.” “We use 100 percent Jimmy Red corn for our whiskey because it has so many flavorful layers, we just didn’t feel like wheat or rye was necessary,” explains High Wire co-founder Scott Blackwell. The cultivar was nearly extinct before being revived in the late 2000s by a coalition of farmers, academics and chefs, including Sean Brock, a champion of threatened Southern heirloom ingredients. New Southern Revival Straight Bourbon Whiskey, from South Carolina’s High Wire Distilling Co., is made with 100 percent Jimmy Red corn, a variety historically grown on James Island and known to be a favorite of South Carolina moonshiners.
When Texas’ Balcones released its Baby Blue whiskey in 2008, for example, the distillery took the logical next step by turning to heirloom grains, namely roasted blue corn, in what would become a milestone bottle for the corn whiskey movement, and for the use of heirloom grains for whiskey in general. It may be a stretch to still call it “craft,” but nonetheless, it paved the way for many craft whiskeys to follow. Since being taken over by multinational William Grant and Sons in 2017, Baby Bourbon has been rechristened Bright Lights, Big Bourbon and the mash bill has dropped to 95 percent corn. But corn whiskey received the craft treatment as early as 2003, when New York’s first legal distillery since Prohibition, Hudson Whiskey, released Baby Bourbon, made with 100 percent local corn and matured in small-format barrels.
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