Widow Jane Lucky Thirteen Bourbon

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Whiskey has just four components: water, grain, yeast, and oak, yet anyone who’s tried a bottom-shelf well whiskey up against a small batch, ten-year-old version from a distiller who knows their craft can tell you that a lot can be done with those four simple inputs. Widow Jane hails from Red Hook in Brooklyn and they’re putting a big emphasis on that first (and last) ingredient: good water. Widow Jane’s Lucky Thirteen Bourbon is one of the distillery’s fortunate beneficiaries of that careful sourcing. 

About a hundred miles north of NYC lies Rosendale, home to the Rosendale Mines where, back in the day, limestone was extracted for constructing the Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, and other notable nineteenth century landmarks. Today, Widow Jane harvests mineral-rich water from a sealed section of one of the Rosendale caverns. It’s a hard and sweet limestone water used to proof all of their whiskeys. 

While the distillery does make their own bourbons from scratch (their heirloom bourbons) much of what Widow Jane does is source barrels of fine, small-batch, straight bourbons from around the country, bring them to Brooklyn, and age them further in their own rick house. Their flagship ten year bourbon is a carefully hand-blended selection of up to five barrels, but Widow Jane Lucky Thirteen Bourbon comes from one special barrel. Each bottle has a varying proof, a hand numbered label, and just the right amount of that sweet, history-infused water.

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