Smoky caramel | Butterscotch | Grass | Wet stone | Touch of raspberry

Huckleberry | Honey | Black pepper | Burnt sugar | Leather

Smoke | Toast  | Black cherry | Toasted malt | Light clove

Frey Ranch Distillery is an estate distillery located in northern Nevada. On this 165 year old, 1,500-acre family farm, they grow all of their grains, malt their barley, and the whiskey is both produced and aged on their grounds. According to the company’s press release,  the ever-inventive Co-founder and Whiskey Farmer Colby Frey and Master Distiller Russell Wedlake reconstituted a smoker from an old grain silo and a fireplace which smoked the whiskey instead of roasting it for this release. Furthermore, they made their own peat from decomposed plant matter from the farm by pressing it into bread pans and dehydrating it to smoke the whiskey to their desired flavor profile. Keeping it simple doesn’t seem to be the Frey Ranch way.

The mention of smoke, peat, and single malt probably turned a lot of people away, as this combination still hasn’t broken into the American whiskey mainstream just yet. But whatever you think this whiskey will taste like, you’ll likely be only half right. Smoke is of course prevalent throughout the whiskey’s sip, but it's not as thick and heavy as it often comes in other “smoky” whiskeys. The same can be said of the whiskey’s peat and single malt aspects. They’re present, but the whiskey as a whole is very tempered despite its 110 proof point. It also features a unique flavor note that I can best describe as huckleberry. It’s hard to pin down completely, but this whiskey is far from straightforward. At first sip you think you can immediately size it up, but there's more going on than you first thought. It doesn’t venture into wildly unique territory, but definitely offers something not typically found in American single malts. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but not to its detriment. It doesn’t try to be as elegant as many American singles malts tend to be, and instead keeps with the Frey Ranch style of getting your hands dirty. The end result may not win over the masses, but I don’t think it was intended to.

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