The vision behind Whiskey Acres, a farm-to-bottle distillery in DeKalb County, is simple: to bring the concept of terroir, the taste and flavor imparted by the land, to distilled spirits.
Surrounded by a sea of corn and soybeans about 70 miles west of Chicago, Whiskey Acres is owned by three farmers. That background, as well as the 635-square-mile county itself where corn accounts for about two-thirds of the farmland, is key to understanding how the distillery approaches the grain that makes up the majority of its spirits.