Limo Service in Brooklyn, IN

“It is thought to be the first nationally-available bourbon made using a proprietary heirloom corn.”

Patience is often the mark of a great whiskey, particularly when it comes to weathering the seasons and in the case of Widow Jane’s latest bourbon, temperamental crop cycles.

The boutique Brooklyn whiskey maker‘s newest release, dubbed Baby Jane Bourbon, goes all-in on the small-batch process, using heirloom corn for a distinctive, carefully crafted final product more than deserving of place of pride in your bar cart. The whiskey maker notes that “it is thought to be the first nationally-available bourbon made using a proprietary heirloom corn,” the result of a labor of love that began long before the spirit could even be barreled or bottled.

Distillery operations lead Michelle Clark and Widow Jane Head Distiller Sienna Jevremov set out in 2013 to work with local farmer John Gill, a fitting connection given that Gill’s property rests not far north from the namesake Widow Jane Mines in tranquil upstate New York. Gill and co. planted heirloom corn seeds, of which Bloody Butcher Red and Wapsie Valley Yellow made the cut.

What happened across the four years after that initial planting was a fusion of science and good, old-fashioned elbow grease: Both strains of corn cross-pollinated over time. As Widow Jane notes, Jevremov and Clark harvested this curious hybrid corn, looking for kernels “with just the right medium-tone coloration.” The final product is now comprised of whiskies between four and six years old, and drives home the point that (as Jevremov notes) Widow Jane was “obsessed from start to finish” with what ended up in the bottle.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Widow Jane (@widowjane)

A “low and slow” cooking process, followed by fermentation and distillation in Widow Jane’s 1000-liter pot and column hybrid single pass still back in Brooklyn (and elsewhere in Kentucky), yielded a whiskey with a characteristic stone fruit profile and a long-lasting finish.

“There are certainly easier ways to make whiskey that don’t involve actually developing and perfecting an entirely original strain of corn,” Clark said. “Tasting the results of all that painstakingly detailed work — trial after trial after trial until we got the liquid where we wanted it before laying it down in barrels — is incredibly gratifying.”

It’s a departure in aging process from, say, the Widow Jane Vaults series, which features a blend of whiskies with a double-digit age statement, but this round yields what the distiller calls a spirit with an “intense whiskey flavor and incredibly creamy mouthfeel.” The distiller notes that, whether enjoyed neat or over a large cube of ice, the whiskey itself “sets a new standard for your everyday sipping bourbon,” and can be found nationwide for $50 per bottle.

Tags:Brooklyn Food & Drink luxury spirits luxury whiskey spirits whiskey Widow Jane

NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- New Yorkers are coming together starting Wednesday to celebrate Juneteenth.

It was 159 years ago when Union General and native New Yorker Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas. He delivered the news that a quarter of a million slaves in Texas had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation two years prior.

The day became known as Juneteenth and symbolizes the battle against oppression.

In 2020, it became a New York State holiday and in 2021, it was finally recognized as a federal holiday.

On Wednesday night, the Empire State Building will shine its lights in red, black, and green, while several events marking Juneteenth are taking place across New York City.

Check out the full list of cultural events happening throughout the summer for New Yorkers to enjoy for free HERE.

Some highlights include:

- Bric Celebrate Brooklyn Celebrate Brooklyn | June 8 - August 17

- Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall Citywide: OKAN | July 20

- Classical Theatre of Harlem Classical Theatre of Harlem's A Midsummer Night's Dream | July 6-28

- Staten Island Philharmonic conference house Conference House Free Performances | June 9-July 7

- Make Music NY Pueblo Harlem Make Music New York | June 21

- Mermaid parade Mermaid Parade | June 22

- Queensboro Dance Queensboro Dance Festival | Through September 15

- Snug Harbor Juneteenth Cottage Row: Curiosities | June 15-October 19

- Summerstage SummerStage | Through October 20

----------

* Get Eyewitness News Delivered

* More New York City news

* Send us a news tip

* Download the abc7NY app for breaking news alerts

* Follow us on YouTube

Submit a tip or story idea to Eyewitness News

Have a breaking news tip or an idea for a story we should cover? Send it to Eyewitness News using the form below. If attaching a video or photo, terms of use apply.

Before you tote your bags of food scraps over to the McCarren Greenmarket on Saturday morning: don’t. May 18 marked the final day of community composting in North Brooklyn (at least for now).

Many will recall that the neighborhood used to have several drop-off sites at local parks: WNYC Transmitter on Sundays, McGolrick on Sundays, and McCarren on Saturdays. The former two sites, run by the local North Brooklyn Compost Project, closed in December 2023 after city-wide funding cuts by the Adams administration. At that time, GrowNYC received an anonymous donation to fund some sites across the city through roughly mid-2024. We’ve now reached the end of that money, and with no new commitment to funding from the city government, McCarren is one of 47 sites across the city now closing entirely.

The future of composting in North Brooklyn—and in the city at large, for that matter—remains murky. Community advocates are hopeful that there’s room for negotiation with the Adams administration in the upcoming 2025 city budget discussions.

“This never should have happened—but it’s the direct result of the Adams administration cutting funding to the Community Compost Program,” said Council Member Lincoln Restler in a recent statement. “I am laser focused on making sure that these community composting drop off sites reopen as soon as possible. I expect the City Council to provide funding for them in the FY25 budget, which begins July 1.”

While reintroduction of community composting funding for 2025 would be a win, it still means Greenpointers are left with fewer options for the rest of 2024.

Curbside composting—where DSNY picks up compost directly at homes, much like garbage collection—is technically implemented across North Brooklyn, but there are practical barriers to success. On neighborhood forums, Greenpointers complain of landlords resistant to curbside because of additional effort and the possibility of decaying food scraps attracting vermin. Until curbside rolls out to all boroughs—a plan which was recently delayed from late 2024 to late 2025—we are currently in a “warning period,” meaning landlords can legally get away with not engaging in curbside. [Editor’s note: There is also a compost option at Domino Park, but the hours are a little irregular]

Local organizations like NBK Compost Project, a part of the larger North Brooklyn Mutual Aid organization, are intent on keeping smaller composting efforts alive in the neighborhood.

“It’s so frustrating that the Mayor continues to not prioritize community composting,” Katie Zwick, a coordinator for NBK Compost Project, said. “Aside from signal boosting calls to action from the Save Our Compost Coalition, Big Reuse, and other organizations calling for restoration of funding for community composting, the North Brooklyn Compost Project has been trying to focus our efforts on smaller scale initiatives locally. We’re collaborating with the PS 110 Greening Committee to help them steward their composting system and care for the beautiful schoolyard garden on Monitor Street.”

Greenpointers who are losing sleep over the end of community composting can consider volunteering with these initiatives (opportunities are typically sent via the newsletter) and continuing to put pressure on neighborhood and city-level elected officials. All eyes remain on the upcoming budget meetings in July.

A few weeks ago, Fontaines D.C. dropped “Starburster,” the uninhibited lead single off of their recently announced fourth album, Romance, out August 23. In anticipation of the upcoming album cycle, the Irish post-punk band spontaneously announced a one-off show at Warsaw in Brooklyn, and tickets sold out in mere minutes. When the day of the show came, a line of Fontaines devotees wrapped around the block of the Greenpoint venue on an 85-degree May evening, buzzing with feverish excitement.

The band themselves were feeling it, too. Over the last years, they’ve amassed a global diehard fanbase, a level of success they hadn’t imagined for themselves. “It’s a beautiful thing to be able to travel the world and play music,” says bassist Conor “Deego” Deegan. “I think we got quite used to people coming up to us in Dublin by now. But having people coming up to us in New York on the street is really bizarre. Quite shocking, but quite amazing really, to even be able to sell out a gig here.”

At the show, they performed "Starburster" live for the first time. The rest of the 17-song setlist drew on Fontaines D.C.'s growing catalog, with songs from 2022’s Skinty Fia and 2019’s Dogrel zapping the crowd with adrenaline and starting several mosh pits. It felt like every attendee was thrilled to be in that room, proof of the air of communal joy that Fontaines foster. (Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner was among those spotted there.)

The Romance era comes with a stylistic shift for Fontaines D.C. – in terms of personal style, sure, but in content and approach, too. “After seeing yourself represented in publications and reading your own words for a long time, you feel a sense of inertia that I kind of got frustrated with — the sort of unchanging nature of how I was coming across,” says Chatten. "I think changing all angles and aspects of what we do was imperative to make sure that we felt like we were taking a genuine step in a different direction.”

“It's kind of funny, it's almost like muscle memory, but for the way we were,” Deegan adds. “Your hands go to the same chords all the time after a while. We were going to the same outfits, and we were going to the same ways of being, and talking, and interviews. I think we really tried to make a conscious break with all of that to stay sincere.”

Words by Leah Lu Photos by Sacha Lecca and Griffin Lotz