A BayTowne Original: Rochester and Woodie Guthrie, The Ballad of the Wheeler Dealer Cocktail

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A story, a soda reduction, and a shot or two of Mellow Corn. Those elements represent the synthesis of this week’s cocktail, a bubbly and refreshing whiskey sour riff, built on the underrated charm of Heaven Hill’s stalwart 100 proof corn whiskey. Pair that with the charm of one of Rochester’s favorite old time soft drinks and a tale told by Woody Guthrie and you’ve got our new cocktail.

Mellow Corn is a unique bottle among Heaven Hill’s offerings. A straight corn whiskey, it’s one of the few put on the market by American whiskey’s biggest producers. Distilled from a mash of at least 80% corn and aged in ex-bourbon barrels, rather than new charred oak, it stands apart from a lineup of bourbons in both appearance and profile. Interestingly enough, Mellow Corn is also bottled in bond, meaning that it must be aged at least four years and bottled at 100 proof. This exemplifies a key part of its underrated status - this is a quality assured whiskey, made by one of the best distilleries in the U.S., and it’s on the shelf for under 25 dollars essentially wherever sold. So though it may be the subject of many a joke, there’s a reason why it’s earned something of a cult following. A good quality, hundred proof, straight corn whiskey, pleasantly sweet and sold for about twenty dollars, Mellow Corn is tough to beat.

The soda reduction element owes its inspiration largely to Garrett Richard and his exemplary work in Tropical Standard, his exploration of advanced mixological techniques in the Tiki space. We previously featured his recipe for Grog Syrup, a Mexican Coca-Cola reduction accented with freshly crushed allspice. When I retasted Mellow Corn, I was so struck by the sweet vanilla tones that I felt the specific sweet/spice interplay of a root beer profile would be the ideal complement. So I thought back to Richard’s Grog Syrup, and to my love of a local favorite, Tom Wahl’s root beer. A beloved Rochester area burger spot, Tom Wahl’s is esteemed for their high quality, batch produced root beer. When I decided to go that sarsaparilla/root beer reduction route, I knew their soda would be a perfect choice, particularly given its creamy vanilla tones.

What tied the whole concept together is a story I recalled from Alan Lomax’s Library of Congress recordings interviewing Woody Guthrie in March of 1940. Guthrie recounts to Lomax an experience in Texas when he took a job at a root beer stand. As he tells the story, once he got behind the counter, it wasn’t solely root beer that he was tasked with selling but, “‘...bottles here of another description,’” which Guthrie soon realized were, “...nothing in the world but unadulterated corn whiskey.” This fun story of Woody Guthrie’s unintended foray into whiskey business under the guise of root beer slinging seemed too good to pass up. Thus, Woody’s story gives this mix its name, as he remembers they were, “wheelin’ and a-dealin’ in the whiskey business.”

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