Mike Swanson is in the unusual position of being both a distiller and a farmer.
As cofounder of Far North Spirits in Hallock, Minnesota—just 35 miles south of the Canadian border—Swanson set out to investigate a matter that interested him: the impact of the rye variety on whiskey.
“I thought rye was rye, like everybody tells you, and it doesn’t really matter,” he says. But then a phone call from a farmer in Maine sparked his curiosity. The farmer was keen to get hold of the AC Hazlet rye variety after hearing about its rich vanilla note, and that led Swanson to start digging into rye flavor profiles.
AC Hazlet rye. Courtesy Far North Spirits.