How A Bourbon Distillery Helped Save A Heritage Corn Variety

High Wire Distilling of Charleston, South Carolina was founded by the husband-and-wife team of Scott Blackwell and Ann Marshall. “Being food people, when we were looking at making bourbon, we asked ourselves what kind of mash bill can we create with interesting flavor,” said Blackwell in a telephone interview. “The number one ingredient in bourbon is corn. So we decided we needed to understand corn.”

Discovering A Lost Corn

The couple reached out to Glen Roberts, the CEO of Anson Mills, a vertically-integrated conservation and research group that preserves heritage grain for culinary purposes. Roberts introduced High Wire to Jimmy Red corn and the rest, as they say, is history. But that is merely the conclusion to a story involving passionate people, dedication to an idea and quite a bit of serendipity.

In a story told by Roberts in a telephone interview, he was driving down a lesser-used road in South Carolina, when his young daughter, who had grown up knowing her father’s passion for heritage agriculture, exclaimed, “Daddy! Daddy! Tall corn!” Modern corn is familiar to most and roughly six feet tall. But there are varieties of corn that grow up to 12-feet-tall and even beyond.

Roberts turned the car around to find the corn growing as part of a small demonstration of mound culture agriculture. The owner of the land had planted it as an educational exercise for his children. That corn was Jimmy Red corn, which had been lost, but for this one person who grew a bit for his children.

Roberts knew this corn needed saving—it’s what Anson Mills does—so when the corn was ready for harvesting, he returned to get some seed. From there Roberts was able to propagate the nearly-defunct plant. Had it not been for his daughter spotting it from the road, the opportunity to save the corn might never have happened.

Making Bourbon With Heritage Corn

In that first meeting among Blackwell, Marshall and Roberts, Roberts showed High Wire about 50 different varieties of seeds—it’s what Anson Mills does. “This one looks different,” said Blackwell, understating his surprise when he first saw Jimmy Red corn.

That corn, with bright red kernels that could be mistaken for pomegranate seeds, are what High Wire Distilling decided to use to make their signature bourbon. The problem was, “It doesn’t exist. You’re gonna have to grow it,” said Roberts. While he was able to show High Wire some of the corn, it had not yet been propagated. Roberts told High Wire that if they wanted to distill with it, they were going to have to help grow it.

So they did.

Working with local agricultural research lands and with the help of many people—commercial corn planting and harvesting equipment is not designed for tall corn—it took time and dedication to grow enough corn for just a test batch to ferment and distill and even then, who knew what it would taste like?

Although the corn had historically been famously used in making the best illicit moonshine, its legal use in bourbon was novel. But High Wire would not be disappointed. In the fermenter, the wash “smelled like peanut butter,” said Blackwell. “It had an oil cap and was thicker.” After distillation, “tasting the new make off the still, it was viscous and definitely tasted different.”

Making bourbon is a years-long endeavor and has inherent risks, and using an untested corn variety added an extra element of uncertainty. But High Wire’s experiment would prove successful.

The fact that the a unique corn variety would make great bourbon should come as no surprise. The corn was famously used in an episode of the Mind of a Chef when Chef Sean Brock used the corn to make grits and Jimmy Red has since been prized by cutting edge chefs for its interesting flavor, often described as sweet and nutty, and its higher oil content, which contributes to the mouthfeel of foods and beverages made from it.

Jimmy Red Bourbon Whiskey is made from 100% corn, showcases the corn’s unique texture and flavor undiluted by other grains. High Wire’s first release of 480 bottles, at $80 each, sold out in 10 minutes. Today, after further propagation of the corn, Jimmy Red Bourbon Whiskey is the distillery’s flagship product, though it also makes rye whiskey, gin, Amaro and vodka. In addition to its initial iteration, now at $55, Jimmy Red Bourbon Whiskey is available in a bottled-in-bond version for $75 and is sometimes available with different cask finishes, ranging from common casks such as sherry, to novel ones, such as peach brandy.

Jimmy Red Bourbon is available in South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Eastern Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

“The flavor is bewitching,” says Roberts.