Frey Ranch: Nevada’s Farm-to-Glass Bourbon and the 10-Year That Changes the Story

Most distilleries buy their grain. Frey Ranch grows theirs. All of it: corn, rye, wheat, and barley, on a 2,500-acre family farm in Fallon, Nevada, where the Frey family has farmed the high desert since 1854, a decade before Nevada was a state. Food and Wine just named Colby and Ashley Frey its 2026 Distillers of the Year. This fall they released the oldest bourbon ever distilled and aged in Nevada. The story is worth knowing.

The Farm Came First

Colby and Ashley Frey did not set out to build a whiskey brand. They set out to keep a farm alive. The family had been working the same land in Churchill County for generations, and when Colby and Ashley took over, they started looking for ways to use what they grew. Distilling made sense: they had the grain, they had the land, they had the water from the Lahontan Valley. In 2013 they received Nevada’s first distilling license since Prohibition. They filled their first barrels in 2014.

What they built from there is one of the few genuine estate distilleries in the United States. Estate means every step happens on the farm: planting, harvesting, malting, milling, distilling, aging, and bottling. They choose grain varieties for whiskey quality, not harvest yield. They test dozens of mash bills. They malt their own barley on-site, which is unusual even among craft producers. Spent grain feeds a neighboring dairy. Manure comes back as fertilizer. The water used in production is recycled for irrigation. Ashley puts it simply: “We’re a farm, not a factory.”

What the Desert Does to Bourbon

Kentucky is the standard for bourbon aging. The humidity moderates temperature swings, the seasons are distinct but not extreme, and barrels expand and contract at a steady pace over years. Nevada is something else. Fallon sits at 3,900 feet in the high desert, with summers that push above 100°F and winters that drop well below freezing. The temperature swings are severe and they happen fast.

That matters for aging. Every swing drives whiskey deeper into the wood and pulls it back out. The barrel does more work per year in Nevada than it does in Kentucky. The result is accelerated maturation: Frey Ranch’s 10-year bourbon has a depth and richness that pushes well past what most distilleries achieve at that age in a more forgiving climate.

The bottles are embossed with a line that works as both farming philosophy and whiskey manifesto: “Be good to the land, and the land will be good to you.”

The Bottles

Colby Frey: “Starting with the best possible grain is the best way to get the best whiskey.” Eleven years into distilling, with Food and Wine’s top honor and a 10-year age statement, the farm is making the case.