Saving the family farm with whiskey
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Jodi:
Colby, give me a brief history of your farm. When did it start? It was a long time ago, wasn't it?
Colby:
Yeah. So my family started farming here in Northern Nevada in 1854, and Nevada didn't even become a state until 1864, and we've been continually farming in Nevada since 10 years before Nevada was even considered a state. We actually owned those some of the first deeded property in Nevada. It's not on the ranch that we're on right now, but it was called Ranch One. And you know the importance of that with agriculture, it's different everywhere you go. And so we have that 170 plus years of agriculture knowledge on how to grow the crops in our specific soil types versus our climate. We're in the driest state of the nation, so there's not a lot of agriculture or field crops like we grow, but we're really lucky to be where we're at, which is Fallon, which is the Oasis in Nevada. So we have quite a bit of water that comes from the Sierra mountains from both sides of lake Tahoe that flow down to us.
Jodi:
Did your family always grow grains or were they in something else?
Colby:
No, we've always grown grains and then a lot of alfalfa also. So a lot of hay and grain crops and traditionally in alfalfa, you have to rotate your crops out of alfalfa around here every, maybe five years-ish. And so we'd always rotate it into a grain crop, wheat, rye, barley, or corn.
Jodi:
How much water do you get a year, and what is the makeup of your soil?
Colby:
You actually have all different soils here on the farm, but it's kind of a sandy clay loam, is probably the predominant one, but I mean it's crazy. In the same field, we'll have white dirt, black dirt, green dirt, orange dirt, all of it in one. I mean, we have sand, clay, everything, but we have a really good layer of top soil over the top, and fortunately we have a lot of tile drains and that sort of thing around the ranch that really help with that drainage. And yeah, there's really good soil.
Jodi:
That's got to be real fun when you're going around assessing soil quality and nutrients and all that stuff.
Colby:
It is. Yeah. Over the years, and that's why I'm fortunate, my family has owned this farm for a long time and they've always taken really good care of it. So they've built up the soil really a lot over the years.
Jodi:
Fast forwarding to now, what kind of grains do you grow on your farm?
Colby:
So we grow wheat, rye, barley, and corn, all for our whiskies. We grow winter wheat, a two- row malting barley, and then winter rye, and then corn, of course, you can't plant in the winter. It's not a winter crop when we plant that. But it's a two-row soft white winter wheat. Did I say two-row winter wheat? That doesn't make sense. It's a two-row barley, but it's a soft white winter wheat and a two- row malting barley, which it's actually a winter variety, which most malting barley... You're familiar with the malting process?
Jodi:
Well, somewhat. My husband has brewed beer before, so I'm a little involved with the chemistry and all that fun stuff.
Colby:
So malt is essentially when you just sprout the grains, you're malting it, you sprout the grains and that's what is the main ingredient in most beers and it's a very important ingredient in the whiskeys also, but two-row is a lot better for malting purposes than six-row barley and most two-row malting barley are all spring planted, but here we're so dry that we can get away with planting winter varieties of two-row malting barley.
Jodi:
Two- row malting barley, what does that mean? You only plant two rows of it?
Colby:
That's a really good question. So the head of the plant has two rows of grain as it grows on the plant. A six-row has six rows of grain. And the problem with that is you yield more of a six-row malting barley or barley. It's barely that's made for malting. But with six-row barley, you actually have two kind of predominant, big rows of seed, and then four rows that are kind of dwarfed. They're just not as consistent. So when you malt, it's really important for it to be really consistent because when you get different seed sizes and everything, what we're doing in the malting process is we hydrate the grain, and then we put it in ideal germinating conditions and we get it to sprout and then we dry it after it sprouts so it gets this little rootlet. Well, when the grain is really inconsistent in size and also in quality and everything else like a six-row would be, it doesn't germinate all the same. It doesn't absorb the moisture from the... When we're getting it to absorb that moisture and everything. And so it's really a lot less consistent in the whole germinating and molting process. And so we want two-row, even though it yields a little bit less, it's better quality for our malting purposes.
Jodi:
How did you guys get started in the distilling business, making the whiskey? What went into that decision?
Colby:
There was a lot that went into it because, with any grain farmers, there's just no real future in it with the way that the commodity prices are, with the way land values and equipment values and everything else. And so my wife and I were looking for ways... Our whole goal is to pass the farm onto our kids, but my dad's a CPA and I have a business background, or I got my degree in business management and there's really no future just growing grains. You're lucky to break even a lot of times. And my dad's a CPA and always said, "We'd be smarter selling the farm, investing the money in some kind of a passive income producing property or investment, and we'd make 10 times the money and we wouldn't even have to work." But that's not who we are.
Colby:
And so my wife and I got together and we said we knew that the grains were really high quality, and we could grow exceptional grain here. What way can we showcase the grains? And we thought, what better way to showcase the crops that we're growing than to make it into whiskey? We'd always loved whiskey, so it was really a natural fit for us to take these grains and make it into whiskey, and it's really a way for me to pass the farm onto my kids and make it worthwhile for them to continue on the farm, not just continuing on just to break even.
Jodi
So the whiskey then, how long have you been making it?
Colby:
That's a long answer to that because we actually got our license to legally start distilling in 2006, but there were no state laws in the state of Nevada. So we got a federal license, but there's no state licenses or anything. So what that meant is we could make it, age it, experiment with it, that kind of thing, but we couldn't let anybody else try it. We couldn't sell it. We couldn't do anything with it. And so from 2006 to 2013, we did things like we determined which varieties of wheat, rye, barley, and corn were the best for distilling purposes. What kind of fertilizer management, irrigation management, all those things that we could try to make the best quality grain, and I always say for distilling purposes, because they're different than what we do to sell it on the open market or the cattle market or anything like that.
Colby:
And so we figured that out, but we also figured out our mash bills, which varieties and what are our recipes are, our yeast varieties, all those kinds of things we figured out. So then in 2013, when we finally were able to get laws passed in the state of Nevada, we knew exactly what we wanted and how we wanted to do it. So that really gave me the confidence to build a big state-of-the-art distillery, and start laying down large quantities of whiskey. So technically our oldest whiskey that we have available, we made very small quantities in those first years, so our oldest whiskey right now is about eight years old.
Jodi:
All right. How long are you going to let it sit?
Colby:
I don't know, that's a good question. With whiskey, we make mostly bourbon, and one of the requirements, there's five requirements for bourbon, has to be 51% or more corn, it has to be distilled to no more than 165 proof, that means you can't distill it to really high proof and take all the flavor out. It has to be put in a new barrel at 125 proof or less and made in the United States. And so that new barrel requirement makes bourbon, I feel, and this is my personal preference, as it ages, there's a peak. And I honestly think after too much time, it gets too much oak flavor. And so to be honest, I don't know how long that's going to be, but here in Nevada, we have the oldest whiskey from the state of Nevada and I feel like our aging process is actually a lot faster, it ages faster here because one of the things is whiskey goes in those barrels and what happens is during really hot summers, it expands in the barrel. During the really cold winters, it contracts. It pushes into that oak layer and it pulls it out. And here in Northern Nevada, it gets down to zero during the coldest part of the winter for a week or two. And it gets up to a hundred plus for the hottest part of the summer for a week or two. And so we really have that expansion and contraction. We don't want it... Like wine, you want it in a wine cellar, where it's really consistent. But with whiskey, we want it to go through the seasons, and so we feel like it's almost accelerated here in Nevada. So we'll see, I honestly think eight or 10 years might be where it's the best.
Jodi:
I say, you're going to have to crack it open and try it, or find someone to try it for you. If I weren't so far away, I'd volunteer happily.
Colby:
We get a lot of volunteers.
Jodi:
I'll bet. So are you finding, as you sell this now, that you're having to grow more grain?
Colby:
Pretty much, yeah. Our production this year, we're producing about 75,000 cases, that's 12 bottles per case, and that requires about 500 acres of ground to produce. We own about 1500 acres right here on the farm, and we also lease some neighboring farms, so we have a tremendous amount that we could grow, but that's a lot of whiskey too. 75,000 cases is a tremendous amount of whiskey. Our first year we might've planted a hundred acres and then kind of grew from there up to the 500 that we're at today, but we still have plenty of room for growth.
Jodi:
That is excellent. And where do you sell the whiskey?
Colby:
So right now we're only in Nevada and California. One of the downfalls with whiskey, if there is any, is that you got to wait five... Our whiskey is all aged a minimum of five years or an average of five years, and so we're limited to sell today what we produced five years ago. So we're producing 75,000 cases, but we didn't produce that much five years ago. And so right now, we're only in Nevada in California and our whole plan this whole time was to slowly grow, but do a good job at the markets that we're in and then grow into a national distillery someday.
Jodi:
Are you happy with where you're at?
Colby:
I am. I'm really happy. We just got eight medals at San Francisco World Spirits Competition out of eight entries. And three of them were double gold medals, which is really a big deal because a double gold medal means... I think there's like 35 judges, and it's all blind, so they don't know what they're tasting. And every one of the judges rates it gold, silver, bronze, or nothing. That's what they rate it. If one of them rates at a silver or less, you cannot get a double gold. So that means all 35 of them thought it was exceptional and it should get a gold medal to get a double metal, which is a big honor, because if one of them said it was a silver, they could've still averaged out and been a gold, but it's not a double gold. I think that competition, something tells me it was like 3,800 entries in the competition. And so there's 3,800 samples that... Now this is different categories and everything else but they have people fly in from around the world, judges, to judge all the whiskeys, and really world-renowned ones. So it was a big honor for us.
Jodi:
What's your plan for growing here in the next few years?
Colby:
Growing the distillery or growing the crops?
Jodi:
Both.
Colby:
Yeah. So we'll continue to grow. Every year, we'll produce a little more whiskey. And growing the crops, we just continue to do what we've done, which is we grow it all in a way that encourages the quality, not necessarily the quantity. And grain's a commodity, it's sold on the open market. And so we always grew it, until the distillery, in a way that gets the most quantity, so that we can make the most money. And I did it and every other farmer should do it if they don't have a purpose for it. But ours, we're growing it for a specific reason, to make whiskey. And so we do whatever it takes to get the best quality for distilling purposes, which often is the opposite of what you do for the cattle market.
Colby:
For example, if we've put on too much nitrogen fertilizer, the more nitrogen typically you put on, the more yield you get with a traditional grain crop. But nitrogen boosts protein in grain, and protein and starch are inverse, when one goes up, the other one goes down. And so by putting a lot of nitrogen fertilizer, we might boost our crop, but the starch content is going to be lower, the protein will be higher, and that's bad for the distillery because we're actually converting the starch in the grain to sugar, which gets converted into alcohol during the fermentation process.
Colby:
And so for us, by sacrificing that quantity, it's better for our purposes by having higher starch content, lower proteins, but now in the cattle market, they might want protein, it might be a good thing. And so that's why it's really important to us to grow over on grain. And our saying is, and it's with anything, with better inputs, you end up with better outputs. So by growing our own grain is really the only way that we can truly tailor the grains the way that we want them and ensure that they're grown in our passion.
Jodi:
Excellent. Well, I think that's all the questions I have. I eaten a lot of your time, unless there's anything else that you wanted to mention that I haven't asked you about?
Colby:
One of the things is we're farmers and we tell everybody we're farmers first. Without the farm, we wouldn't have the distillery. Our whole goal is to take the grains that we're growing and making a world-class whiskey out of them. Most distilleries, and there's nothing wrong with it, buy their grains on the open market, either distill them and that's just not who we are. And so our whole goal is to showcase the grains. That's one of the reasons why our bourbon, our traditional bourbon, our flagship product is a four grain bourbon. Now most bourbons are corn, barley and rye or corn, barley and wheat. Ours is a four grain. We wanted wheat and rye in it because they offer a little bit different flavors and complexity when you're drinking the bourbon, and we really wanted to showcase all four grains. That was really important for us.