Last year, Frey Ranch® Distillery‘s First Harvest whiskey sold out within 17 minutes on its website.
Because it proved so popular, this year fans can enter a lottery through Monday at midnight for the chance to be one of 333 people to buy a bottle of Frey Ranch Harvester Series: Second Harvest for $249.99. A very limited number of bottles also will be available through some retail outlets across Nevada and California.
“Our Harvester Series is the culmination of our farm-to-glass approach because we are taking the absolute best barrels in our warehouse, blending them to perfection, and packaging the whiskey in a way that reflects our life on the farm, with the grain silo packaing and tractor topper,” says Colby Frey, co-founder and whiskey farmer at Frey Ranch Distillery.
Frey Ranch is a farm to glass whiskey distiller, as they grow all the grains used in their whiskeys, before distilling and aging them all on their ranch and distillery in Fallon, NV.
Last year’s First Harvest release leaned heavily into a rye dominant blend while this year’s Second Harvest is a blend of predominantly wheat whiskey. Their master blender, Nancy Fraley cherry picked her favorite barrels, alongside Frey and his wife Ashley and Russell Wedlake, master distiller.
“With all of our whiskeys, we want to showcase the flavor of our grains,” Wedlake says.
The popularity of the Harvester Series at Frey Ranch is indicative of whiskey’s growing popularity. According to Statista, whiskey is on the rise again in the United States. “Despite the recent setbacks, the U.S. is still the second largest whiskey market in the world, trailing only India,” Statista’s report says.
Fraley says her job is to be a “grain whisperer and barrel whisperer.” “As a blender, I feel my job is to highlight the best barrels, to see where they are at a particular point in time and find what I deem to be the best,” she says.
With barrels ranging in age from eight years & seven months to four years & six months, the blend of this exquisite sipping spirit features 52.5% of wheat whiskey, followed by 14.25% of four grain bourbon, 9.5% of unmalted barley whiskey, 9.5% of malted barley whiskey, 9.5% of barley whiskey (half malted & half unmalted), which is rounded off with a whisper of quad malt whiskey at 4.25%.
“What’s so exciting about this project is the chance to experiment with wholly unique blends where the sky is the limit,” Fraley says. “First Harvest was a 71% rye blend, so when we looked at the composition for this new blend, we knew that we wanted to start with a wheat-forward base to create a whiskey with a softer, sweeter, and more delicate taste profile.”
The topper for this special whiskey is a vintage tractor topper made from 100% recycle metal, ad the bottle is nestled in exterior packaging that is reminiscent of a grain silo. Only 600 bottles will be sold, with 150 of them sold this past Saturday. “This whiskey really allows you to taste the terroir,” Fraley says.