Nevada's Grain to Glass Frey Ranch's Straight Bourbon Whiskey

The Frey Ranch's working collection of antique tractors illustrates their commitment to the land's heritage photo credit Frey Ranch Distillery

Nevada is hardly a whiskey country, at least as far as making it goes. While its desert saloons and casinos may pour plenty of it, there are only a few patches of the state suitable for growing hundreds of acres of grain required for a distillery’s worth of the stuff. Frey Ranch, situated an hour east of Reno, occupies a good slice of one such rural oasis — and it’s here that they grow, distill and age their Straight Bourbon Whiskey (45% ABV, SRP:$50).

Colby Frey. Photo by Jeff Dow

Don’t let the simplicity of this bottle fool you. I’d pour a glass of it for someone just getting into whiskey as readily as I would a more well-read palate that’s tired of over-oaked newcomers looking to stand out. Frey Ranch pays attention to the grains in a way few others do, and the result is a drink that’s small-town smooth and sophisticatedly subtle, a bottle you want to come back to — much as distillery owner Colby Frey felt about his family’s farm. “The whole reason why we did the distillery is my love of agriculture. My family actually started farming here in northern Nevada here in 1854,” Frey says of a farm pedigree a full ten years older than Nevada. Frey is a farmer first, but a keen businessman second. You have to be in an operation as mindful of the future as distilling — or crop-growing. “So what better way to showcase our grains that we’re growing than to make them into a whiskey? I’ve always loved whiskey, we’re always looking for ways to vertically integrate.”

Farm to Distillery

Frey Ranch Corn Field by Jeff Dow

Frey got his distilling license in 2006 only to discover that distillation was still frontier territory for Nevada's legal code. In the following seven years, he managed to get several laws on the books regulating the craft distillation industry, alongside experimenting with every whiskey possibility based on the crops the farm could grow. “We grew the grains, different varieties of those grains, tried different irrigation management, different fertilizer management, different malting techniques. We had experimented with different years, different mash bills — everything we could do.” One of the publicly available results, alongside some non-aged spirits along the way, was Straight Bourbon Whiskey

“Our whiskey’s a four-grain. I’ve always loved… really, all whiskey,” Frey laughs. “I love peated bourbon, I love high ryes, sometimes. But I really don’t prefer one over the other, and that’s why we did ours as a four-grain bourbon; we wanted some of that spice of the rye. And this wheat that we grow has this really unique, creamy mouthfeel. It invites you back for more with a beautiful finish.”

Good to the Grain

Frey Ranch Bourbon Bottle by Jeff Dow

Pour yourself a neat glass and the grains greet you on the nose, a bit shyly. Scarcely a bite, despite the 90 proof. These are farm smells, not intense but earthy; they’re the corn, winter wheat, winter rye, and two-row barley that makes up the mash bill. You’ll smell candied and burnt citrus, yes, but what you’re really smelling is rye on top of oat and oak. Those who’ve spent time on farms and had a chance to chew on rye stems and pop open the oat husks for the drop of sweet milk within will recognize the flavors: the quiet signature of the end of summer. If you’ve ever run a plank of oak through a band saw, you’ll recognize that hot, sweet smell here, too; the non-chill filtered bourbon nicely draws out the best of the charred oak staves.

On the sip, this whiskey becomes a bakery. You’ll find cinnamon buns, pain aux raisins, buckwheat cakes, buttered cornbread (the good Southern kind, made with bacon grease). You could sip this bottle neat over the course of two weeks and still encounter a new baked good in each glass. If you’re feeling peckish, you can nibble something along the side, but the best compliment is a bit of dark chocolate: the creaminess highlights the oak and draws out the oats and corn profiles. You’ll notice, too, the grainy, grassy flavors of cocoa thanks to the barley and rye. But the easiest way to find the grain profiles out is with a good ice block or a few water drops. Just a hint of water and you immediately have a mouthful of buttered banana bread, fresh from the oven, all toasted and browned on the edges.

Frey often references breakfast and comfort foods (he alludes to an oat whiskey varietal that went through blueberries, then bacon, then cookies over the course of its aging) and I can see why. There’s a primitive, gastronomic nostalgia his whiskey conjures up. That’s the power, I believe, of such intentional farming and distillation as Frey practices. “For us, we’re trying to showcase the grains. We don’t want to mask them with anything else. We’re grain-forward,” says Frey.

There’s a bit of a grain cycle at Frey Ranch that’s a bit old-fashioned in its forward-thinking. Byproducts from the still go to a dairy next door in tractor-hauled trailers: “They feed it to the cows, they make manure... and manure’s the best fertilizer there is,” says Frey, who eschews heavier nitrogen-rich commercial fertilizers. “You put on a lot of nitrogen, your yields, your proteins go up, but your starches go down. In the distillery, we’re looking for starch. So we use mostly manure.”

Heavenly High Sierra

Frey Ranch Barrel House by Jeff Dow

Frey’s abundant groundwater comes from prime real estate: Lake Tahoe and its surrounding mountains. But it doesn't come at the risk of crop-destroying dampness; gravity-fed irrigation channels ensure healthy crops from the water table while the annual inch of rain leaves little opportunity for mold and mildew. Grains dry easily in the arid afternoons, reducing dependence on dryers and commercial dehydrators. And the high desert climate works the barrels generously through four distinct seasons, with a 100° plus days in summer. “Sometimes we get all four seasons in one day,” Frey chuckles. “The only thing we don’t have here in the barrel houses is a lot of humidity, so we have humidifiers. With low humidity, you lose more water out of the barrels. Your proof’s going up. And if your proof is going up, you’re going to have to add more water to cut it down to get it down to 90 proof. That’s no good because it’s less flavorful… it sounds backward, but I’d rather lose alcohol than water because you have to dilute it less.”

Frey’s willingness to pay angels their due may have something to with his distillery’s heavenly setting, but I’d wager the distillery’s long-term success comes from something more earthly. Turn one of the stout, heavy bottles (designed by Frey’s wife and co-founder, Ashley Frey) on its side, and you’ll find this motto: “Be good to the land and the land will be good to you.” From his ground water-cooled equipment and proprietary fertilizer to his flavorful homegrown grains that don’t require a fleet of trucks to ship them to his fermenters, Frey’s approach to whiskey might sound intentionally ecological. But to Frey, it’s how things have always been done. “We don’t do all that stuff because it’s trendy or to try to sell more whiskey, but because it’s kind of a way of life, common-sense sustainability. We’re one of the most sustainable distilleries in the country, not because we set out to be that, but because it’s the right thing to do.”

Perhaps that’s why this whiskey tastes just right. It’s an honest drink, one that lets those earthy flavors take front and center with little to adorn them. It’s not a hold-on-to-your-hat sort of whiskey, but a summer night and rainy evening sipper that rewards you for spending a few minutes with it, looking for the grains. And each sip’s a pleasure.