Forget Wheat or Rye — This Charleston Distillery Is Making 100% Corn Bourbon

Scott Blackwell baked pies for restaurants to pay his way through college at Furman University, distributed Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in the Carolinas, paired pastries and specialty coffee as a corporate caterer, and developed an interest in organic farming and terroir after opening a cafe and roastery. Coffee beans were the gateway to agriculture, and that was just the beginning. 

Blackwell pursued formal pastry training at the Culinary Institute of America in 1995 after years of entrepreneurship and launched Immaculate Baking Company in his garage in 1998, eventually meeting food marketer Ann Marshall, who would join the venture and become his wife. By 2012, the couple sold the successful baking business to General Mills and took the leap to distilling.

In their thorough research and development into the viability of a distillery, the many rules regulating bourbon — starting with the requirement that 51% or more of the ingredients be corn grown in the United States — piqued Blackwell’s curiosity about why the spirit is categorized as rye or wheat.

“I've been in the food business my whole life, and when I started looking into mash bills, I'm like, what's the corn do? If it's 75-80% of the mash bill, why do they call wheat or rye a flavoring grain?” he said to bourbon fans at a seminar at the 2024 Food & Wine Classic in Charleston. “And I thought, well, maybe they're just not using very good corn, or corn that doesn't have a whole lot of flavor. That was where the wheels started turning.”

So, the couple began experimenting with Hire Wire mash bill, starting with 100% Jimmy Red corn — a near-extinct heirloom varietal that they propagated with Clemson for nine years to revive — and the flavor was so complex, they still make the flagship bourbon without wheat or rye.

Blackwell describes the taste in baking terms: graham, spice, an earthy, honey sweetness as opposed to a sugar sweetness, a high viscosity, and a rich mouthfeel. “We also get caramel corn-type flavors, things of that nature, almost more like dessert, custard flavors. Those are sort of the traditional characteristics,” he said. “So when we're putting together a batch, we will try to hit those notes.”

The baker refined his recipe, adjusting yeast strains and fermentation temperatures, using a sweet mash rather than a sour mash. Jimmy Red Straight Bourbon Whiskey is aged for at least two years in American oak barrels with a char of 3.5. And while the popular spirit is now available far and wide, the couple has continued to work with Clemson to study the corn’s terroir — a reason to taste the product where it’s made.

High Wire Distilling Co. offers tours and tastings in Charleston, South Carolina, where they make all their spirits with heirloom grains from local family farms.