Widow Jane Bottles Heirloom Corn Whiskey Baby Jane

Distilling using locally grown heirloom corn, Widow Jane Distillery has introduced Baby Jane Bourbon by Widow Jane.

This is the result of a decade-long journey.

In 2013, Widow Jane Head Distiller Sienna Jevremov, along with the Brooklyn distillery’s long-tenured operations lead, Michele Clark, hopped in their sedan and headed upstate. The duo were curious about heirloom corn: the kind of corn that could yield an intense whiskey flavor and incredibly creamy mouthfeel. They met with local farmer John Gill, who lived just a few miles north of the Widow Jane Mines from which Widow Jane sources limestone-rich water to proof its whiskeys. The trio planted several strains of heirloom corn, with Bloody Butcher Red and Wapsie Valley Yellow proving the most successful. 

Side by side, Bloody Butcher and Wapsie Valley grew. A byproduct of this growth was a cross pollination that produced a natural, if inconsistent hybrid of the two. For four years after that first meeting, Jevremov and Clark returned upstate where they harvested the hybrid corn, plucking individual kernels with just the right medium-tone coloration, and replanting those kernels. Eventually, their efforts yielded an entirely new, proprietary strain of heirloom corn they christened “Baby Jane”.

Today, that corn produced a whiskey by the same name, which the distillery believes is the first nationally available bourbon made using a proprietary heirloom corn.

“Our mantra in developing Baby Jane, both the corn and the whiskey, has been ‘obsessed from start to finish’,” says Jevremov. “With this whiskey, we wanted to break the perception that truly distinctive bottles with special stories have to be cost prohibitive to the point that you’re afraid to open them. Baby Jane pushes the boundaries of what raw ingredients can deliver and sets a new standard for go-to sipping bourbons.”

On the nose is honeycomb, cream soda, salty air and green grape, the distillery reports. The palate brings café au lait, strawberries and cream taffy, salted caramel, fresh fig, allspice and raspberry leaf, before a finish of peach compote, star anise, cut hay, horchata, soft pretzel and milk chocolate.

Baby Jane Bourbon By Widow Jane is aged 4-6 years. It comes bottled at 91 proof. Available in 15,000 total cases, Baby Jane Bourbon By Widow Jane rolls out nationwide beginning this month.

The suggested retail price is $50 per 750-ml. bottle.

Widow Jane was acquired by Heaven Hill in 2022.

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