Heirloom Corn Is Going to Redefine the Bourbon Industry

As someone who used to work in restaurants, coffee roasting and bakery goods, Scott Blackwell came to making bourbon — which he concedes he knew next to nothing about at the time — through the eyes of a foodie. “You can get a white mushroom or a shiitake or a portobello, and they all have their own flavor profile,” Blackwell, who is the co-founder of South Carolina’s High Wire Distilling Co, says. “In coffee, we’re used to thinking about ingredients from the grower onwards. But the same thinking doesn’t typically seem to be applied to bourbon, [like asking] what sort of corn is used?”

As Blackwell discovered, it matters. Because bourbon must be at least 51% corn by legal definition, it’s surprising more consideration isn’t given to the type used. High Wire might have taken this thought to extremes. The distillery collaborated on plant research with Clemson University, grew its own crop of a then virtually non-existent corn and even explored the archive bunkers of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Taxco, Mexico, with their 28,000 varieties of corn seed. “You can alter the balance of wheat and rye [in the mash bill] all you like, but that doesn’t really result in anything crazy,” Blackwell says. “We wanted to push things as far as they could go.”

The final result is Jimmy Red bourbon, a 100% corn bourbon named after the James Island Red corn varietal that features an earthy sweetness and rich viscosity. Currently, High Wire also has in barrels an ”exotic” bourbon produced from a red corn developed with the aforementioned agricultural geneticists in Mexico.

High Wire isn’t alone in exploring the potential for different corns. Heritage (or heirloom corns, as they’re sometimes called) are akin to the heritage tomatoes in your fancier grocery. You only need to look to niche, connoisseur brands such as Wood Hat, Widow Jane or New Riff, among others, to find whiskey makers experimenting with their core ingredient.

Indeed, more and more niche makers are starting to partner with local farmers to grow the rarer, often wonderfully-named corns that help make for less run-of-the-mill bourbons: a touch of Pencil Cobb corn adds cherry notes, Boone County some pepperiness. As a bonus, these efforts are proving an asset to biodiversity, as well. James Island Red was on the brink of extinction until High Wire helped revive it.

“Experimenting with corn varieties is what helps us stand out. A lot of people tell me heritage grains are the future of American whiskey,” says Jim Massey, whiskey maker at Nashville-based Fugitives Spirits, which works with local grains to give what it calls a “true taste of Tennessee terroir.” As Massey suggests, Scotch whisky’s whole pitch is its sense of place and the ingredients that come from that place. Why not so for American whiskey? “And with the prices spent on whiskeys going up, there’s space in the market to use more expensive ingredients in a way that’s not open to the brands making at the scale of, for example, a Jim Beam,” he adds.

And the price does matter: Massey suggests that the giants are likely getting 10 to 20 times more corn for the money he pays. While making good bourbon isn’t about the corn alone — charred oak barrels, aging and distillation methods all play their part — yellow corn and low-sugar white corn have, in effect, become industrial products.

The standard Yellow Dent corn may have won Best in Show at the 1893 World’s Fair, but over the decades, it has been finessed through the wonders of science to be easy to grow, harvest and give a high yield — but not necessarily to give great flavor, texture or mouthfeel. “If a whisky-maker isn’t telling you the kind of corn they’re using, they’re telling you the kind of corn they’re using,” Massey says.

With a master’s in chemical engineering and a previous career in industrial distilling, Joyce Nethery is likely hyper aware of the flattening effects of using mass-market ingredients. The master distiller at Kentucky-based Jeptha Creed distillery started growing a corn varietal called Bloody Butcher — which can be traced back to 1840s Virginia and is so named for its vibrant red color — to make a creamy cornbread before applying it to bourbon. The fact that the local deer ate a lot of her crop (“You lose a lot of your heritage corn in the field,” she laments) only convinced her of its tastiness. Nethery is now exploring the potential in Hickory King (a blue corn from the American Southwest) and Thomas Jefferson (a corn once grown by the former President himself), with bourbons made from them either aging on her farm or currently being distilled.

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“Is the effort worth it? Yes,” Nethery enthuses. “The corn’s deep color, extra maltose and banana overtones make for a drink that’s distinct from other bourbons — and that matters when you’re in the middle of bourbon country. I don’t think the average bourbon drinker realizes just how much the choice of corn can influence the flavor of the drink. That’s changing though, albeit slowly.”

As hard as it can be to make converts, more people are ready to pay a sizeable premium for all sorts of farm-to-table products because they taste better. But Nethery still gets riled up at the thought of a master distiller (who goes unnamed) who once insisted to her that the choice of corn made no difference at all. “That mentality has been standard in the bourbon industry for many years,” she sighs. The proof of how wrong this is, she counters, is in the drinking.