Frey Ranch Distillery just announced the release of their first American single malt whiskey, which was not just grown, harvested and distilled on their farm, but it was also smoked in-house using their own peat.
“Someone once told me that I’d never be able to make a smoked whiskey, and I said ‘Challenge accepted,’” says Colby Frey, who founded this Fallon, NV farm-to-glass, estate distillery with his wife Ashley on the Frey family 1,500 acre farm. “When someone throws down a gauntlet like that, my immediate response is I need to prove them wrong.”
Frey Ranch American Single Malt Smoked whiskey, which is sold online at here for $59.99 in 375 ml. bottles, is 110 proof and aged for six years and seven months. The whiskey is made using 100 percent of slow-grown barley on the farm.
Frey built his own smoker by reconstituting a smoker from an old grain silo and a fireplace. He also made his own peat from decomposed plant matter from the farm by pressing it into bread pans and dehydrating it to properly smoke the whiskey. “Like everything we do at the ranch, the team and I had some fun putting together our custom smoker, taking a few days to weld, cut, and wire it to our precise specifications,” Frey says. The smoker was built in 2016. “We built it around seven years ago, when we were contemplating different ways to showcase our grains through whiskey production,” Frey says. “As with all Frey Ranch whiskeys, we pride ourselves on overseeing all aspects of the production process – meaning nothing leaves our Nevada farm until its ready to be sold.”
“We didn’t want toy release our smoked single malt too soon, as we were really focused at the time on successfully introducing our signature whiskey, Frey Ranch Four Grain Bourbon, which put Frey Ranch and Nevada on the map as a serious whiskey producer,” Frey says.
But now, with its release, the timing couldn’t be better. “We’re happy to see our patience pay off, as American single malts are truly having a moment right now in the whiskey zeitgeist,” Frey says.
Frey Ranch American Single Malt Smoked is not only their first American Single Malt release, but it is the first in Frey Ranch’s “smoked series,” which will be followed with the release of Frey Ranch Rye & Smoked Oat Whiskey.
For more information please visit https://freyranch.com/