"Be good to the land, and the land will be good to you” is embossed on the bottom of every bottle of Frey Ranch whiskey. It’s a philosophy that Colby Frey, cofounder of Frey Ranch Distillery (freyranch.com), lives by.
“Farmers are sustainable by nature,” Frey says. “Many people just use it as a buzzword. ‘We’re gonna be sustainable, because that’s what sells.’ But we’ve always done these little things.”
The buildings where the whiskey is distilled and aged are on the same land where the wheat, rye, and corn are grown. “Our trademark is total control from ground to glass. When we send a bottle to our distributor, none of those ingredients have left our possession,” Frey says. That allows for not only closer supervision, but also the reuse of resources and a minimized carbon footprint.
Maximizing and reusing resources has always been part of the nature of farming and is essential to the workings of Frey Ranch. Water that is circulated through the stills is reused to irrigate the fields. It creates its own version of peat from decomposed corn stalks and compost. The ranch also has a deal with a nearby dairy farm, where the cows get feed and the fields get fertilizer. “It’s a nice little circle, where we sell them the spent grain, and they give us the manure back, and it helps us grow the next grain. It’s our own little ecosystem,” Frey says.
His family has been farming in Nevada since before it was a state and have been on the current Frey Ranch land, near Fallon, for more than a century. “I always knew I wanted to create something,” he says. “Most farmers have to have a second job because they don’t make any money off being a farmer. My dad was a CPA and a farmer. I’d rather sell whiskey and be a farmer.”
And Frey Ranch has sold quite a bit of it over the past 12 years, developing varieties of whiskey, bourbon, and rye that have won dozens of awards. Their process sets them apart as much as their product.
An increasing number of distilleries are embracing the idea of growing their own grains. Big names such as Maker’s Mark and Heaven Hill grow a portion of their wheat or corn on company-owned farms, and the University of Kentucky recently established the Estate Whiskey Alliance to encourage the idea and share practices. Frey Ranch was one of the first distilleries involved in the group. Frey feels it’s important because “in the wine world, everyone talks about the grapes and where they came from, but in the whiskey world nobody wants to talk about it. Here is a movement for that.”
“In Kentucky, they’ll haul in their rye from Canada or Germany,” he says. “Think how much energy that takes versus us growing it right here.” It also allows Frey to focus on quality over quantity and experiment with different varieties — they might grow more than 100 types of corn in one year. “I don’t want to mask the flavor of the grains, I want to bring them up front,” Frey says. And good grains make for good booze.
“As a farmer, I’m basically just a temporary steward of the land,” Frey says. “If we don’t take care of the environment or the soil or natural resources, we don’t have a future as farmers.” Or as distillers.
