Widow Jane Lucky Thirteen Bourbon
Photos via Widow Jane
The American whiskey industry sure is a fascinating one, when you consider what activities are able to earn hype for a company. Boutique, independent bottlers like Barrell have come into vogue without distilling any product of their own, focusing entirely on sourcing unique barrels from giants of the industry before applying their considerable blending skills to the equation. Massive whiskey producers like MGP of Indiana, on the other hand, functioned almost entirely like the bourbon and rye industry’s silent partner for many years, lacking their own house brands until quite recently. It leads to odd circumstances where one blender can achieve seemingly overnight hype for their presentation of bourbon that a company like MGP has been steadily producing for decades.
And then there’s a distillery like Brooklyn’s Widow Jane, sitting somewhere in the middle. They have indeed been producing their own spirits on site for years now, but those whiskeys—which they call their “heirloom” bourbons—are hardly what has earned the company the lion’s share of its attention. Rather, it’s products like the flagship Widow Jane 10 Year Bourbon, which is a blend of straight bourbons sourced from Kentucky, Tennessee and Indiana, or special releases such as Widow Jane Decadence or The Vaults that generate headlines. Is that enough to earn a company an enduring position in the whiskey world? Or must one eventually be judged solely by their own distillate? How much do you have to do to sourced whiskey, to truly make it your own?
Widow Jane’s newest release certainly makes one ponder those questions. Lucky Thirteen is a limited release of 100 high-rye single barrels sourced from Lawrenceburg’s MGP of Indiana, hand-selected by Widow Jane head distiller Lisa Wicker. As the name would imply, the barrels selected were all 13 years old, but Wicker then took the interesting step of individually proofing each and every barrel for release, depending on the unique profile that each developed during aging. That means the Lucky 13 releases vary in proof from 91 to 99 (45.5-49.5% ABV), a not insignificant range in terms of their eventual assertiveness. As ever, they’re proofed down with Widow Jane’s signature limestone mineral water, “from the legendary Rosendale mines of NY.” MSRP is set at $90.
So, let’s go in for a taste and see how this whiskey has fared.