Bright green apple | Light vanilla | Oak | Fresh herbs | Intensely herbaceous

Rye grain | Green apple | Blackberry crumble | Rye spice | Oak

Rye spice | Leather | Chewy dry oak | Dry lingering spice

Lost Lantern’s Summer 2025 Collection “celebrates the rise of estate distilleries.” These types of distilleries grow all of their own grain either onsite or within a short distance to their distilling facilities. This helps give rise to the “grain to glass” movement within the whiskey industry and, like wine, seeks to highlight terroir, or a "sense of place" that the whiskey embodies.    

Far North Spirits is aptly named because, you guessed it, it’s geographically positioned far north in the continental United States. A five-and-a-half-hour drive north from Minneapolis, Far North Spirits is only about 25 miles from the Canadian border and is the northernmost distillery in the contiguous United States. Michael Swanson and Cheri Reese started the estate distillery in 2013; however, the farm itself has been continuously farmed by the Swanson family since 1917.

The nose is like walking into a fresh herb garden with bright, intensely herbaceous scents hitting you instantly, making you pause as you try to wade through them and pick out individual herbs. The midpoint transitions into a forward-leaning note of rye grain that is propped up with faint green apple, blackberry crumble, and a swirl of rye spice and oak. It’s this rye spice that kicks off the finish and pulls in leather and chewy dry oak before transitioning to a dry lingering spice that makes you ask what you just experienced.

For only being four years old, this rye will surprise you with how much flavor it’s packing. It’s a great example of an estate distillery and the nuanced flavors that can come about thanks to the grains farmed and the climate location of the distillery. With so much focus being on distilleries in Texas or the Southwest as of late, it’s refreshing that Lost Lantern is exposing consumers to an extremely far north distillery and the resulting whiskey that the incredibly cold climate can bring about. I eagerly look forward to seeing what Far North Spirits produces in the future, and hope that their standard offering starts to include a barrel proof version that uses their Hazlet rye.

Lost Lantern Frey Ranch Estate-Grown Nevada Straight Rye is a 226 bottle release.