Whiskey and agriculture have always gone hand in hand. Centuries ago, farmers fermented and distilled excess grain that wasn’t needed for food. Distillation not only preserved the hard-won crop; it enhanced its value, and made it easier to transport to market and sell. Imagine how much a wagonload of whiskey barrels would fetch compared to a wagonload of flour sacks.

Over the years, farming and whiskey both got bigger and more commodified, to the point that nowadays, monocrops dominate our food and spirits supplies. The lion’s share of whiskey is made from just a handful of commodity grain varieties, often grown hundreds or thousands of miles away from the distillery. While a boon for efficiency and cost, the downside to this system is loss of flavor diversity. Even with all the other ways distillers have to tweak flavor creation—fermentation, distillation, maturation—if the base ingredients never vary, there’s a measure of uniformity baked in.

But the craft whiskey movement of the last 20 years has generated more desire for unique whiskey flavor than ever before. Coupled with the existing farm-to-table movement, it has created opportunities for farmers to explore and experiment with distilling. Or for distillers to try their hand at growing their own grains.

Now, there’s a small but lively cadre of farmer-distillers who control every step of the process, short of making the barrels for aging. And there are even more who do almost everything, perhaps limited by size or ability to grow certain grains in their geographic area. These scrappy producers are plowing old furrows lost to time, often focusing on heritage grains and old-school techniques, like floor malting. And they’re even inspiring large distilleries, like Heaven Hill, to start their own field-to-bottle initiatives.

There’s even a nascent Estate Whiskey Alliance that aims to certify distilleries using at least two-thirds grain grown on their own land or land that they control, something that could eventually prove to be a valuable marketing tool. For now, check out the American distilleries making seed-to-sip whiskey below.

Frey Ranch (Fallon, NV)

Fifth-generation Nevada farmer Colby Frey and his wife, Ashley, got into distilling for the same reasons their forebears did: it was a more lucrative use of their 1,500-acre farm’s output. Frey Ranch grows all of the corn, wheat, rye, barley, and other grains for its whiskey range, which focuses on bourbon and rye but also includes American single malt and curiosities like 100 percent oat whiskey. Sustainability is baked into both the agriculture and whiskey production: Colby built the distillery’s malt cylinder out of old dairy equipment, and even created a faux “peat” from the farm’s corn waste for smoking barley.

Recommended Whiskey: Frey Ranch Farm Strength Uncut Bourbon ($80)

Broadslab (Benson, NC)

Just 100 acres in the heart of North Carolina’s Piedmont supply the corn, rye, and barley used by this family-owned distillery, whose unusually shaped direct-fired pot still is an homage to the one used by founder Jeremy Norris’s grandfather, a moonshiner in his day. (Really!) The whiskies are primarily aged in on-site rickhouses, but Broadslab has a patent pending for an additional maturation process, which it calls “flue curing”: transferring the barrels to neighboring tobacco barns for a few weeks each summer, while the tobacco dries and cures. The intense heat boosts interaction between wood and whiskey and creates bolder, more oak-forward flavors. And who knows—maybe the tobacco itself has an impact too.

Recommended Whiskey: Broadslab Flue Cured Single Barrel Rye ($69) (available in North Carolina’s ABC stores and at the distillery)

Minden Mill (Minden, NV)

Originally called Bently Heritage Estate, Minden Mill changed hands in 2023 and is now owned by Foley Family Wine & Spirits. But the massive distillery, housed in an old flour mill and creamery, continues to use only grain grown on its land to make bourbon, rye, single malt, and clear spirits like vodka and gin. It has both traditional floor maltings and modern malt drums, and some of its rickhouses are temperature- and humidity-controlled to mimic maturation conditions in both Kentucky and Scotland.

Recommended Whiskey: Minden Mill Four Grain Bourbon ($45)

Hillrock Estate (Ancram, NY)

One of the first farm distilleries of the modern craft whiskey movement, opened under the guidance of legendary master distiller Dave Pickerell. The Upstate New York farm supplies heirloom corn, rye, and barley for its whiskies, and it has the most picturesque malting floor in America. Curiously, the malt gets dried over peat, the only ingredient that’s brought in from elsewhere. Hillrock’s solera bourbon was seeded with sourced whiskey in its early years, but is now fully produced on site and, appropriately, finished in sherry casks, while its rye is one of the few 100 percent rye whiskies in the U.S.

Recommended Whiskey: Hillrock Estate Single Malt ($100)

Whiskey Acres (Dekalb, IL)

Just an hour’s drive from Chicago, this impressive corn empire makes mostly bourbon, including recipes that feature esoteric varieties like Bloody Butcher and Blue Popcorn. It’s all grown on just a fraction of the 2,000-acre farm; most of the grains are sold on the commodity market, but the “cream of the crop” goes into whiskey. One caveat: Whiskey Acres isn’t always able to grow enough barley to supply its needs—agriculture being unpredictable and all that—so it occasionally has to purchase some. But at the time of this writing, the distillery is working with its own grain 100 percent.

Recommended Whiskey: Whiskey Acres 7-Year-Old Bourbon ($80)

Far North (Hallock, MN)

“Drinking is an agricultural act,” declares Far North’s website. Michael Swanson and his wife, Cheri Reese, opened the distillery on Swanson’s 100-year-old family farm, just 25 miles from the Canadian border, in 2013. Far North makes bourbon but its focus is rye—Swanson worked with Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture to study rye varieties for both agronomic performance and sensory characteristics. While the couple grow all the corn and rye the distillery needs, they purchase locally grown malted barley from nearby Vertical Malt.

Recommended Whiskey: Far North Roknar Bonded Rye ($59)

Corbin Cash (Atwater, CA)

Although founder and master distiller David Souza grows more sweet potatoes than anything else, his farm also supplies the Merced rye that goes into Corbin Cash’s 100 percent rye whiskey. Souza also makes a spirit from sweet potatoes, barrel-aging some of it to blend with the whiskey for a truly unique pour. And although corn doesn’t grow well in the farm’s sandy soil, Corbin Cash does make a small amount of bourbon, using corn from a friend’s nearby farm.

Recommended Whiskey: Corbin Cash 1917 Merced Rye ($100)  

Southern Distilling Co. (Statesville, NC)

One of the best-kept secrets in contract whiskey, Southern is a large-scale craft distillery that produces for dozens of brands, including its own. Third-generation farmers Pete and Vienna Barger initially thought of converting their hay and tree farm to a winery, but then realized the opportunity in whiskey. The Bargers’ farm provides the majority of the grain needed to produce more than a million proof gallons of whiskey per year. (They don’t grow barley, so the malt comes from Montana.) And the operation is growing, with an upcoming expansion set to more than triple production.

Recommended Whiskey: Hunting Creek Rye ($50) (available in North Carolina ABC stores and at the distillery)