Corncrackers Bourbon: Throwback Reimagined
Throwback, repurposed, or resurrected brands are nothing new. Trading on nostalgia has practically been a part of the whiskey business since the Revolution. Brands promoting that “old time flavor” have always seemed present, referencing older, simpler times whether they had occurred or not. Appropriating the history of a place or historical character, or specific time; then spinning that into a useful mythology is indeed a grand tradition in American whiskey, as sure as the making of the liquid itself.
The current vogue of “authenticity” is in fact NOT the tradition in whiskey. Consumers who demand to know where every last drop of liquid was produced (and who produced it) is a fairly recent phenomenon, driven in part by social media and the quick access to information, but also by the click bait articles a la Daily Beast’s famous “Your ‘Craft’ Whiskey is Probably From a Factory Distillery In Indiana.” Never mind of course that the “factory” distillery has been producing world class whiskey since the late 30s, but still the concept that a brand must lay bare its complete path to production in order to gain traction has in some sense lessened the fun, or at least lightened the proverbial glasses a few shades less than rose.
So how to go about honoring history, while accounting for the consumer’s new demand for transparency? That was our question when we set about building a new “value” priced bourbon. We know we wanted glass and a cork closure, but we also decided to go with one front label with UPC, no neck decoration and bottling at 80 proof with a 2+ year old MGP whiskey. So under those guidelines the brand had to deliver fun history with enough gravitas to attract the bourbon buyer who buys everything, but also appeal to the “daily” customer who demands familiarity. And thus Corncrackers was born.
We borrowed heavily from an old Shawhan letterhead, a distillery and brand which went out of business before Prohibition but eventually laid the groundwork for the McCormick distillery in Weston, Missouri. We replaced the “Lone Jack” tree with an ear of corn, more fitting for an Indiana based brand and liquid, and we substituted the name of the brand with “Certified Sour Mash Whiskey…Independently Owned” and “Bottled by Hand” along with the notation of the obscure aquifer from which Lawrenceburg distilleries have been drawing water from for the latest two centuries. We did steal directly the brand motto, “It Keeps On Tasting Good” a quirk or tick among earlier whiskey brands which you don’t seen much anymore. The mottos were typically homespun reassurances that the brand you were choosing was good or reliable on some basic level. They’re still fun to use.
The name for the brand “Corncrackers” is taken from a book of “Biographical Sketches” by Louisville newspaperman John J McAfee published in 1883. The civic high-mindedness of the sketches of Kentucky leaders from that time along with small paragraphs on subjects like “Kindness” and “How To Better Oneself” strike today’s reader as impossibly quaint, and yet simultaneously sad for the disjointed state of civic discourse we currently find ourselves in. Either way, a “Corncracker” refers to those pioneering industrialists who after the west was “settled” set about growing it, and expanding it in as many directions as possible. And so we aim to expand our brand…
Corncrackers Straight Bourbon Whiskey
SRP $13.99
Bottled in Bloomington, Indiana
Distilled in Lawrenceburg, Indiana
80 proof
