Whiskey Acres
By Meghan Swanson
The Cut
Founded: 2013
Location: DeKalb, IL
Flagship Products: Straight Bourbon, Bonded Bourbon and Artisan Series
Grain Varietals: 3 Proprietary Corns, Blue Popcorn, Bloody Butcher, Oaxacan Green
Yeast: Variety of several strains
Fermentation: Sweet Mash, Open Top
Stills: 500 gallon pot still with an 8-plate column
Manufacturer: Vendome Copper & Brass Works
Barrels: 53 gallon toasted char 3 barrels
Cooperage: Kelvin Cooperage
Production: 500 barrels per year
A lawyer, an engineer, and a marketing guy walk into a corn field–it’s not the set up for a punchline. It’s the story of Illinois’ first estate distillery and the three fifth-generation farmers that brought it to life. Whiskey Acres is a ‘seed-to-spirit’ farm distillery that sits just 60 miles west of Chicago in DeKalb, Illinois.
“The foundation of what we do, who we are, and what we think is important is that we are farmers first.
Nick Nagele, co-founder, vice president, and COO, is one member of the founding trio (he’s the marketing guy). He grew up in Sheldon, Illinois, a tiny town about 100 miles due south of Chicago. His graduating class was made up of just 15 students, and while he didn’t exactly learn in a one-room schoolhouse, his educational experience sounds like the life of a schoolboy from a previous century. “There were 78 in my high school, K through 12, I never left the building. You know, they don't make them like that anymore.” he reminisced. His family has been farming in Illinois since the 1860s. Jamie Walter, president, CEO, and co-founder, and Jim Walter, co-founder, are the father-and-son team that makes up the other two parts of the Whiskey Acres trio. The Walters have family ties to farming, and whiskey, stretching back to the 1890s, and their family has been farming in DeKalb since the 1930s. “There hasn't been continuous distillation since then, just for full transparency,” Nick pointed out. “The more important thing is there has been production agriculture going on where I'm sitting right now for nearly 100 years.” he said.
Nick’s family has a strong history with both farming and distilling. “I have family who was distilling in Peoria, Illinois pre-prohibition.” he tells us. His own father used to have Nick’s great-great-grandfather’s still, brought to the New World from Germany. Unfortunately, after 20 years of being ‘in the way’ in his dad’s tractor shed, the still was given away. “I know it's somewhere in West Virginia. It's a personal goal of mine to get that thing back.” Nick vowed. He told us, however, that the distilling history of both families doesn’t have any direct influence on what Whiskey Acres is doing today. “Everything that we're doing today is based on our farming lineage and wanting to do something special, unique and direct-to-consumer with what we're growing.” he said.
Nick’s perspective on farming today isn’t the same one he had as a kid. “I never had an appreciation for how blessed I was to have grown up on a farm.” he recalled. When the farm boy moved on from his high school’s graduating class of 15 to the University of Illinois where 40,000 people swarmed over the campus, he began to realize the gift he’d been given. “Something as basic as being able to understand the difference between a corn plant and soybean plant, or truly know that there aren't brown cows that make chocolate milk.” he said. “We laugh at that, but there is a segment of consumers who believe in these things that are just nonsense.” he explained. He loved bringing his college friends from the city or the suburbs to the family farm, where he’d put them up on a tractor for the first time or trick them into touching the hot wire fence. Creating these moments of wonder or mischief for his friends was all part of Nick’s desire to share the farming life that he had come to realize was more special and important than he ever thought of as a boy.
“Opening Whiskey Acres was a way to create something really special from grain that I'm helping to grow.”
After college, Nick continued to help his father out on their family farm, but the Nagele farm wasn’t the place for Nick’s career to flourish. “It’s big enough he [Nick’s dad] needs help, but not big enough that he needs a partner.” he explained. Nick settled into the agribusiness world, working as a district sales manager for a seed company. That’s where he ended up meeting Jim and Jamie Walter – as customers. Jim Walter, also a University of Illinois alum, grew up in DeKalb. He is known as a progressive sort of farmer, embracing new technology with enthusiasm. The Whiskey Acres estate farm is one of the first in the area to completely divest from livestock, focusing fully on becoming very good at growing row crops. “Jim, if you were talking to him, wouldn't tell you this--but he is an awarded Master Farmer.” Nick revealed. The Illinois Master Farmer award, handed out to deserving farmers each year since 1925, is best described as a lifetime achievement award for farming. “You're nominated by your peers for being a good steward of the land, a good member of the community, working hard to make sure that you're teaching the next generation to do what they're doing and to do it better.” Nick explained. “And obviously, you're raising good crops.” he finished with a smile.
Jim’s son, Jamie, also attended the University of Illinois and went on to earn a law degree from Drake University. He returned to the DeKalb area to practice law when an opportunity came along; one of Jamie’s uncles retired, offering Jamie the chance to buy him out and buy into the farm. “Drive the countryside and you won't find another couple of farmers with those sorts of academic backgrounds who are actively involved in production agriculture.” Nick said. Jamie came to the farm with a bright entrepreneurial spirit, leading them to add different businesses to the farm like a seed business and crop insurance. The Walters first entered the beverage alcohol world when they launched their own wine label with some local business partners. They sourced, smashed, and bottled lovely Cabernets from Napa Valley to great success; that is, until their wine broker went bankrupt while still in possession of pallets’ worth of the Walters’ wine. Jamie drew on his training in the law and eventually freed their wine from the red tape. The experience taught him a valuable lesson. “’I never want to be involved in something where I don't have control of this again,’” Nick quoted Jamie.
During this time, Nick had gotten to know Jamie and Jim well. Well enough that when he was offered a job from a competitive seed company, he asked for their opinion. Comparing his position at the time with what the new potential employer was offering, Jamie and Jim advised him to take it. “The next day Jamie called me and said, ‘Hey, Nick, have you taken the job yet?’ and I said, I haven't. But I’m probably going to,” Nick recalled. “He said, ‘Well, give it a day. My dad and I have an idea we want to share with you.’” Nick remembered. This idea, they warned, was a little out of left field; but they felt they knew Nick well enough to know he would be interested. They needed someone to run their seed business, an area Nick was already accomplished in, and they also wanted to look into opening a vertically integrated distillery on their farm. “So I went home that night and had a very different conversation with my wife than we had the previous night,” Nick said with a laugh. He saw in the Walters’ business proposition a way to share farming life with the average American the way he used to share it with his college friends, one visit home at a time. “Whiskey Acres was a way to create a venue and a platform to invite all those consumers that are inexperienced regarding agriculture to the farm, to sit here, to see, to learn, to taste and have a conversation over a glass of whiskey that we grew right onsite.” he said, eyes alight.
“Us growing grain and feeding it to yeast to make alcohol is no different than us growing grain and feeding it to pigs to make a pork chop.”
The initial conversation about adding a distillery to the Walter farm happened in 2011. In 2012, Nick quit his day job, and by 2013 Whiskey Acres was officially incorporated. “So we went to classes, we read the books, we did the distillery tours, and quickly found out that there's a pretty big gap between what we think we need to know and what we actually need to know.” Nick recalled. In an introduction to distilling course at Koval Distillery in Chicago, the owner of 45th Parallel Distillery suggested that Jamie reach out to the late Dave Pickerell. “I have the picture in my mind of Jamie’s notes having the name Dave Pickerell with the arrow and then, quote, ‘Michael Jordan of distilling’ next to it,” Nick remembered. It took the Whiskey Acres trio months of reaching out to the highly-sought-after whiskey expert before Dave was able to get back to them. Once they had his attention, they flew him out and gave him the tour and laid out their vision. “Dave looked at us and said, ‘This is what I was trying to get Maker's Mark to do for the last 20 years.’” Nick recalled proudly. “And so he came on board, not to teach us how to make somebody else's whiskey, but to help us navigate bureaucracy, to source equipment, and to put ourselves in a position to best leverage the grain that we're growing on site.” Nick said.
The first drop of whiskey came off their still in 2014. “That was ‘learning curve whiskey’. really it was corn whiskey that we were doing just to get some white dog in a bottle.” Nick told us. They filled their first barrel of bourbon in February 2015; and barrels #1 and #2 are still sitting in their warehouse right now. “One of Dave's number one pieces of advice to us was, particularly at startup, you must have a consumer-facing space for cash flow and consumer engagement marketing.” Nick explained. Jim’s brother had lived in the house that is now on the Whiskey Acres site, and built a little outdoor structure nicknamed the ‘picnic shelter’ using the stones and timber from the homestead’s original dairy barn. With their pragmatic farmers’ mindset, Jim, Jamie, and Nick decided to turn that into their customer-facing space. In the summer of 2015, they chased out the raccoons that had taken up residence, cleaned it top to bottom, and retrofitted a bar into the space. That was when the local bureaucracy—infamous for its resistance to anything ‘creative’—took note of Whiskey Acres.
Their 500-gallon eight-plate column still, Flo, was placed inside a 30 year-old steel building originally meant for agronomy research that was being underutilized. The planning and zoning administrator objected strenuously; this was not traditional agriculture, he insisted, and they could not use that building for it under the law. Jamie’s law training came in handy yet again—he worked with the Farm Bureau and the county until they acknowledged that feeding their grain to yeast was the same, technically, as feeding it to livestock. The bureaucratic shenanigans continued—at one point, unable to sell merch with their hands tied by a law that demanded they literally grew every item they sold, Whiskey Acres began to simply sell individual kernels of corn (buy 3, get a free T shirt!)—until eventually, their place in DeKalb was settled. “It was unfortunate that we just weren't embraced,” Nick lamented. “If I could apply the weeks and months of time and stress dedicated to navigating this local bureaucracy to brand-building, or whiskey-making, or consumer engagement, it would have been—” he cut himself off. “We'd at least be healthier people today.” He summed up with a rueful smile.
“One of the things that we often say is that DeKalb County is the Napa Valley of corn. If you were handed 1000 acres and told ‘hey, you can go start raising corn anywhere in the world’—this would be a top place.”
Nick is a grain guy. Specifically, he’s a corn guy. When asked what grain varietals Whiskey Acres uses, he tells us right off the bat that three of them are proprietary. “We have three very specific varietals of yellow dent corn that we use for our bonded bourbon and our straight bourbon that took decades of farming to identify. And we keep those close to the chest.” he said. For their artisan grain series, however, he’s fully transparent about the corn they grow and use. “We use a blue popcorn, a bloody butcher corn, and a Oaxacan green corn.” The blue popcorn came from a friend of Nick’s; he grows it for gourmet popcorn. Whiskey Acres’ Blue Popcorn Bourbon might very well be the first bourbon made with ‘popcorn’ corn. It performs well with consumers, too; it won double platinum at the ASCOT awards. Tasting the first run of the blue popcorn distillate was a life-changing experience for Nick. “You remember that moment, where you held your son or daughter for the first time and it was just like, ‘This is awesome’? That's the best analogy I can make.” he said. Waxing poetic about glass gem corn, another varietal Whiskey Acres is experimenting with growing, he describes the kernels as “Like when they found Chester Copperpot’s treasure in the Goonies—all of the rubies and the emeralds are up there.”
This carefully nurtured corn, and the other grains Whiskey Acres grows, ends up in the capable hands of Rob Wallace, their master distiller. Nick taught Rob everything he knew, and Rob went on to earn his master’s degree in distillation and fermentation sciences from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh. “And the things that he distilled and blended and bottled are the things that have won double gold at San Francisco.” Nick pointed out. “I talked earlier about Jim being a Master Farmer, we feel like Rob earned the title of Master Distiller.” he said. “I think we are the only distillery that has a Master Farmer and Master Distiller on the team that work together to make sure that we're producing this stuff.” he mused.
Heirloom, proprietary varietals of corn, an expert distiller, and sharp advice from Dave Pickerell are only part of the alchemy of Whiskey Acres. Jamie’s grandfather unknowingly set them up 100 years ago with another essential element: perfect limestone water. When the trio was getting Whiskey Acres off the ground, they started looking into digging a municipal sized water supply to meet their cooling demands; the well that Jamie’s grandpa dug just wasn’t up to the job. Dave pumped the brakes, encouraging them to check the water quality they changed things around. Nick remembers Dave opening up the envelope that contained the test results. “And he just starts laughing and he says ‘Boys, your water is chemically identical to water used in Bardstown, Kentucky.’” Nick, Jamie, and Jim pivoted to a glycol-based cooling system that recycles and reuses just about every gallon of water drawn from that old well. “Dave said, ‘Don’t dig a new well, but make sure this one doesn’t run dry.’” Nick recalled.
“So we have a still made by Vendome in Kentucky that all the major bourbon producers use, we are taught to make whiskey by Dave Pickerell--who is the Johnny Appleseed of craft distilling.” Nick said. “We have water that's chemically identical to water being used in Bardstown, Kentucky, we're using barrels that come from and are supplied to all the major distilleries in Kentucky. And oh, by the way, where do you think Kentucky gets a lot of their corn? Right? So all the things that you could possibly want to check or that are positives about distilling in Kentucky are things that we're able to check as well.” He pointed out.
“We are a true estate distillery that controls every part of the process from the seed we put in the ground to the spirit we put in the bottle.”
The engineer/marketing guy/lawyer might sound like the set-up for a bad joke, but it’s a combination that’s working out beautifully for Whiskey Acres. “We drive each other batshit crazy, and the lawyer thinks very differently from the engineer and very differently from the marketing guy, but we hold each other accountable. We’re willing to listen,” Nick said. “Having these pillars of our founding is really key.” He told us. Even more important are their deep farming roots and commitment to honest, authentically produced whiskey. “I could go plant some very high-yielding varietals of corn that will be very good for the bottom line of the farm, but not necessarily good for the taste profile of our whiskey,” Nick explained. “But great whiskey isn’t made, it’s grown. We are damn proud of the fact that we're involved in every facet of the seed to spirit story.”
Tasting Notes
Bottled in Bond Bourbon (50% ABV)
Nose: Ruby Red Plum, Rolling Tobacco, Fresh Rosemary
Palate: The mouthfeel is thick with nice heat. Citrus, nuts and grains dominate the front palate settling into sweet vanilla bean and black pepper on the mid palate with a long dark chocolate, herbal and tobacco finish.
This is a nice bourbon. It has a great body with nicely balanced flavors throughout. You can still appreciate the corn in this, which is really special considering Whiskey Acres role as both farmer and distiller.
Bottled in Bond Rye Whiskey (50% ABV)
Nose: Caramelized Banana, Whole Grain Cereal, Dill
Palate: The mouthfeel is thick and syrupy with candy bar caramel flavor up front. Cinnamon and brown sugar join in the mid palate, all leading towards a long finish of brown sugar, black pepper, and oak with a hint of mint.
This is a phenomenal rye. It has some of the traditional spice you might expect, along with beautiful herbal notes. That said, the real draw is how sweet it is. It’s like drinking a complex candy bar. Absolutely delicious.
7-Year Bourbon (53.5% ABV)
Nose: Vanilla, Honey, Orange Citrus, Burnt Ends Brisket
Palate: The mouthfeel is buttery with a good kick. Orange citrus and burnt sugar quickly fade into heavy oak spice with light vanilla flavor that holds through a long finish.
This is a nice bourbon. Very bold and the texture and heat is wonderful. The oak influence may be a bit strong in the mid palate but is balanced out nicely with sweet notes on the front and back palate.
Blue Popcorn Bourbon (48.5% ABV)
Nose: Caramel, Peach, Fresh Corn
Palate: The mouthfeel is coating with a bit of heat. The front of the palate is sweet and tart with notes of cooked carrots, melon and granny smith apple. Caramel notes come in through the mid palate along with oak before settling into a savory salt and pepper finish with a bit of sweet corn.
This is an interesting whiskey. The bitterness at the open throws us off a bit. More traditional bourbon flavors come in towards the middle/back palate. The grain finish is nice if you’re into it. It would be very interesting to see what this tastes like as an unaged spirit. All in all, we always applaud the use of unique varietals of grain. This is certainly worth checking out, but it may not be for everyone.
Bloody Butcher Bourbon (47.8% ABV)
Nose: Vanilla, Corn Bread, Banana, Oak
Palate: The mouthfeel is silky with a hint of spice. The front palate is filled with sweet flavors of vanilla and banana. Soft baking spices mixed with oak come through in the mid palate settling into a long finish with lingering vanilla and crisp apple.
This is a well rounded and very enjoyable bourbon. The body reminded us a lot of the 7-year bourbon with less of the oak influence, making this slightly more approachable.
Maple Cask Finish Bourbon (57.5% ABV)
Nose: Maple, Honey, Peach
Palate: The mouthfeel is sugar sharp and syrupy with a strong maple flavor up front. Some black pepper spice and oak bitterness balances out the sweetness but the maple flavor remains strong throughout.
This bourbon is like dessert in your glass. The maple cask finish not only adds incredible sweetness but also rounds out the body making this whiskey very easy to drink even at the higher proof. If you like maple flavor, you have to try this one!