How is it that a whiskey amasses cultish appeal? It’s a question routinely asked in the era of Pappymania. Entire books have been devoted to the subject. There’s no easy answer, but an obligatory baseline for all examples ought to be a precise combination of top-shelf acclaim and frustrating scarcity. One brand turns this seemingly obvious formula on its head, though.
Mellow Corn is abundantly available across the country for damn near $12 a bottle. If you ever find it gracing a top shelf it’s almost certainly an exercise in irony. Nevertheless, it’s a liquid universally beloved by bartenders and feverishly embraced by a wide swath of American whiskey aficionados. The bottled-in-bond corn whiskey even enjoys its own subreddit, a distinction no other Heaven Hill brand currently enjoys.
A cursory glance at that delightfully self-aware corner of fandom reveals the myriad ways in which the obsession takes shape: One subredditor recently shared a song that their band wrote as an ode to the liquid. Another showed how they drape their bottle in a velvet cloth reserved for a far pricier American whiskey. Plenty a devotee has taken to the message board simply to post a snap of a recent purchase, presented rather unmagnificently atop their lap. And yet it’s hard to find a forum where people are doing the same with similarly ubiquitous offerings like, say, Jack Daniel’s, Maker’s, or Evan Williams.
So, what exactly sowed the kernels of this industry obsession? It’s time to peel back the stalk and see.
A Corn Star Is Born
The story of the brand stretches back nearly 80 years to Owensboro, Ky., where it was originally crafted by the Medley Distilling Company. It was a curious beast from conception. In the world of American grain spirit, corn whiskey — as a category — is already a head scratcher.
Sculpted from a mash bill containing at least 80 percent of its namesake starch, it’s the only style of American whiskey that needn’t even touch wood to maintain the word “whiskey” on its label. And yet the madmen at Medley were audacious enough to age this one for a minimum of four years — the industry’s only bottled-in-bond corn whiskey.
It was eventually acquired by current owner, Heaven Hill, as part of a multi-brand acquisition from United Distillers in 1993. Heaven Hill president Max Shapira was eagerly gobbling up labels no less legendary than Old Fitzgerald and Dubonnet when he noticed Mellow Corn on the list of UD’s holdings. “You want us to take this, too?” he asked, offhandedly, at the negotiating table. “They said, ‘Yeah, throw it in.’ And we bought it. I promise you that I’m not exaggerating too much.”
Consistently Corny
Since then, the quality of the liquid has undoubtedly improved. It is, after all, produced by the same folks responsible for legacy labels including Elijah Craig, Parker’s Heritage, and Bernheim. And it’s distilled with largely the same ingredients reserved for some of those bourbons, even maturing in barrels formerly occupied by the very same.
Mellow Corn’s packaging, meanwhile, has remained untouched: a label that’s almost offensively yellow, topped by a line of slime green trimming. It announces itself using mid-20th-century typography and even holds onto the Medley Distilling Company’s original corporate seal.
“It first grabbed the attention of bartenders as a curiosity; a nearly defunct style of whiskey that’s a cousin of bourbon, with a bit of history and tradition especially with the bonded aspect. But then you throw in the fact that it’s currently being produced at a distillery they know and love — especially through brands like Rittenhouse.”
This stubborn attachment to nostalgia is a feature not a flaw. Indeed, it’s a key to its cultishness.
“I was first introduced to Mellow Corn around 2010 by a fellow bartender,” recalls Anu Apte of Rob Roy in Seattle. “At that time, bourbon ruled the house and rye whiskey was the emerging trend. Mellow Corn was the unique and very affordable missing puzzle piece to my back bar. It has a ‘cheap’ looking bottle and a stand-out label that baffled guests when they saw it nuzzled up against other American whiskies up on the shelf. It quickly became our bartenders handshake.”
A Bartender’s Best Friend
The talented tastemakers behind the stick are, naturally, the primary drivers of drink trends. And they were very much in the front seat for the modern Mellow Corn renaissance. In 2012, at the inaugural iteration of Camp Runamok — a now annual summer camp for bartenders — attendees from across the country found a kindred spirit in the overlooked bottom-shelf beverage. That mutual adoration congealed further through social media.
“Mellow Corn has a cult following on the Camp Runamok alumni Facebook group, where various bartenders extol its virtues,” says Frederic Yarm, lead bartender at Josephine in Somerville, Mass. “One local bar here in Boston, the Quiet Few, had on their boilermaker section of the menu a Runamok, which was a Strawberry Lemonade Naturdays beer paired with a shot of Mellow Corn as a nod to the whiskey camp experience and the internet phenomenon that followed.”
Yarm has seen the liquid work its way onto many bar menus across the country in boilermaker form. Its favorable price point allows drink makers to present an affordable, high-impact beer/whiskey combo. And Mellow Corn’s lighter profile effortlessly complements the gentleness of mass- market lagers. Additionally, it flaunts a pedigree long appreciated by seasoned bartenders.
“It first grabbed the attention of bartenders as a curiosity; a nearly defunct style of whiskey that’s a cousin of bourbon, with a bit of history and tradition especially with the bonded aspect,” he says. “But then you throw in the fact that it’s currently being produced at a distillery they know and love — especially through brands like Rittenhouse.”
“Sure, it’ll make a fine whiskey cola or ginger with bitters. But it also plays well in sours, especially with baking spices or fruits. Peach and corn? It’s like the Fourth of July in a glass!”
Package it all up with a kitschy throwback label, he reasons, and you’ve got a winning recipe. Colleen Hughes concurs. As beverage director at SupperLand in Charlotte, N.C., she has long observed the “cool kids” coming in and looking for that new quirky value brand. Something they can point out to their friends and say, “Oh, you don’t know about this? Well, let me show you!” In her experience, it developed that insider’s cachet on her side of the stick.
“Mellow Corn is now finding itself in the lexicon of bartender handshakes alongside Fernet, Melort, and Old Grand-Dad,” she says. “Something to cheers and shoot with a beer chaser at the end of a long night on the bar. And for the lightness of flavor, it makes a pretty good highball, too.”
It’s the Liquid, Stupid
The spry, spiced-vanilla tonalities of Mellow Corn afford it a resounding versatility in all sorts of whiskey cocktails. Beyond the simple highball and Old Fashioned options, advanced mixological implications abound. “Sure, it’ll make a fine whiskey cola or ginger with bitters,” observes Kim Stodel at two Michelin-starred Providence in Los Angeles. “But it also plays well in sours, especially with baking spices or fruits. Peach and corn? It’s like the Fourth of July in a glass!”
Standing on its own, Mellow Corn is decidedly lacking in aromatics. There’s only the faintest echo of toasted tortilla to offset ethanol undertones. But once you tackle it neat, you ought to be altogether impressed by plantain and spiced cashews flanking the vanilla at its core. As one popular Vlogger pointed out prior to a tasting, Mellow Corn has bested a field of prominent bourbons when sampled blind.
You can’t sail too far on kitschy labels, irony, and bartender bravado if the liquid in the glass isn’t seaworthy to begin with. In turn, even though no one knows exactly how a whiskey ends up as a cult hit, we do know how it has to start.
