Smoked & Age Jimmy Red Bourbon

Maranda Sutton

December 11, 2022

We've told the Jimmy Red story on Seelbach's before. A varietal of corn was on the edge of extinction. With the help of Ted Chewning and multiple others, Jimmy Red was saved. From there it went on to create a wave of innovation in the culinary world. In 2014, High Wire started distilling some of this corn. After a few successful runs they went all in! The use of heritage grains adds a new layer of flavors in complexity to bourbon. High Wire was not willing to settle and continuously experiments with their Jimmy Red Bourbon. That's how we arrived at today's release.

Smoked whiskey is nothing new. High Wire owners Ann Marshall and Scott Blackwell had been thinking about a smoked whiskey for a while. Scotch distillers have used peat moss to smoke their malted barley for centuries. After a visit to a Palenque in Oaxaca in 2019 the idea of a smokehouse seemed to be the best route. In a nod to their southern roots and culinary heritage, High Wire called in Allan Benton of Benton’s Country Hams. This release started with 5,000 lbs of Jimmy Red corn. The corn hung in Benton's smoke house for nearly a week. From there, High Wire kept their product process the same. The smoked Jimmy Red resulted in a nuanced whiskey of light smoke, rich vanilla custard with a finish of charred pineapple and fresh cracked black pepper.