Farmer-distilled whiskey wins Best-in-State award

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Whiskey Acres Distilling Company, where the corn is grown, harvested and distilled on-site, once again earned top honors at the Heartland Whiskey Competition as Best-in-State for Illinois.

The estate distillery located on a family farm in DeKalb was recently recognized at the Illinois Corn Growers Association annual meeting for earning top honors for the second consecutive time in the biennial competition.

“We are proud to see Whiskey Acres earn this honor again,” said Rodney Weinzierl, IL Corn executive director.

“Their accomplishment underscores the value of corn in adding real value on-farm, supporting local agriculture and showing how quality grain makes an exceptional product.”

Whiskey Acres was founded on the fifth-generation Walter family farm.

“The distillery is going on 11 years of value-added production. We exclusively use the grains that we grow on the farm to make bourbon, rye whiskey and other artisan expressions of distilled spirits,” said Nick Nagele, co-founder, distiller and farmer at Whiskey Acres.

Nagele also helps his father on his family’s farm near Sheldon in eastern Illinois. Nagele’s business partners, Jim and Jamie Walter, own and operate the DeKalb farm.

The Walters were looking for ways to innovate and diversify their farming operations, and Jamie suggested creating a distillery using grain from their production to create quality spirits.

“The Walter farm is a little less than 2,000 acres, primarily corn and soybeans, and we have added wheat and barley as crops specifically to feed the distillery. Depending on the year, we use about 10% of what we grow to operate the distillery and treat the rest of the crop as a commodity,” said Nagele said in an interview with AgriNews at the recent ICGA meeting.

“We have a beautiful visitor center that’s open on the weekends where you can taste the spirits and we tell the story of the farm.

“One important thing to add is that we, as distillers, look at ourselves as farmers first, and the visitor center that we’ve built and the investments we’ve made in the operation are really about becoming sort of a front line of conversation about modern day agriculture.

“We have about 30,000 guests a year come through the visitor center. Most of them have never stepped foot on a farm, and we think it’s important to be able to use the facility and the products as a way to have an open conversation about what we do, why we do it and really tell the story about modern production agriculture.”

There has been a boom in agritourism over the past two decades, giving farmers an opportunity to diversify and add value to their operation.

“The value of a bushel of corn is much higher in a bottle of bourbon than it is in the back of a semi truck,” Nagele said.

Corn Groups’ Support

IL Corn, along with corn grower organizations from 12 other states, sponsor the biennial Heartland spirits competition. Distillers from all U.S. states and territories are eligible to compete.

“The foundation of being able to enter is that you have to make your spirits from corn. They have hundreds of distilleries throughout the country enter their spirits,” Nagele said.

“Industry professionals blindly taste them, give ratings and then, based off your aggregate ratings, individual products are given awards. Then, in aggregate, your products are awarded, as well, then you get to walk away with the best distiller and the state award like we did.”