A number of Tennessee farms are involved in the alcohol, craft beer, and malted liquor industries, growing corn or barley for the products, and perhaps making the beverages themselves. The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture teams with producers statewide to provide guidance on production and marketing. On this edition of AgCast, Malted Ag, and its potential for growth. Hello, I'm Charles Denny.
This is AgCast, brought to you by the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture. An enormous vat of bubbling liquid, part of a new enterprise for Tennessee agriculture. Sazerac makes some of the world's premium bourbons, and now they're in the Tennessee whiskey business, fermenting and aging alcohol at their facility in Laverne. More than 7,000 barrels are here, and some of the largest pot stills in the country.
Sazerac is also teamed with area farmers who provide grain and corn for production. John Lund is a master distiller for the company. Right, so it's important for us to use stuff as close to home as we can get. So we have a great partnership with Beatty Farm to get our corn here locally, literally about 10 minutes down the road from us.
And we think that helps us control quality, and obviously cost, and just all-around good arrangement. Yeah, and talk about the company. I've got some extra website. You guys are all over the world pretty much, aren't you?
Yeah, so the great thing about Sazerac, we're a family-owned American company, and provide the world with some of the most premium bourbons around, so Buffalo Trace, Blanton's, Barton 1792. So now we're in the Tennessee whiskey market. This is some rye that's been grown here, and this is some of our Tennessee-grown malted barley. Brandon Witt helps operate Beatty Farms in Purposeboro, where they're building a malt house and growing corn, rye, barley, and wheat for brewers and distillers statewide.
Sure, there's a lot of things that we can't do here just because of regional limitations, but there's also a lot that we can do. We live in a terrific breadbasket to grow a variety of grains and have the ability to turn those grains into whatever desired product that the end user wants. And so I always kind of try to explain, it's like all of us can bake a really good chocolate chip cookie if we follow the Toll House recipe on the back of the package. But really thinking outside the box and taking the regional flavors that we can grow here.
Witt believes there's a natural connection here, Tennessee farmers and the beverage makers. Yeah, so we work with a number of local-owned breweries and distilleries all over Tennessee, everywhere from West Tennessee to East Tennessee. And that's kind of opened up a lot of different opportunities, a lot of dialogue to where the industry is going. We're members of the distillers and the Brewers Guild here in Tennessee.
And just really immersing ourselves into that industry and being a part of a solution that they really didn't even know they had a need for. UT Extension in Rutherford County recently hosted a farm and ferment workshop. Clearly, there's a lot of interest here. Even on a snowy day, 150 people showed up.
Brewers, distillers, winemakers, and farmers. Rachel Painter is a UT Extension agent in Murfreesboro and helped organize farm and ferment. The farm-to-table movement is now going beyond the plate to what's in your glass. And I think that's an amazing movement that we can be a part of.
In the past, American brewers and distillers used barley and wheat produced in Europe or Canada. Painter says now there's an effort to use grain grown right here in our state and potentially other farm products. I think that largely, this is an untapped market for our Tennessee producers. So, of course, there's room for growing more crops, for corn, wheat, barley to go into this, but also other things like fruits, honey, nuts, other locally sourced inputs for our craft beverages.
And these craft beverage producers are looking for those locally grown products to use. And it's amazing to see the consumer demand for those. So once they make a locally grown product using local barley or local corn or even local fruit, they've made beer with watermelon or a certain walnut or something like that. And it's amazing to see from their eyes that consumer demand pooling from our locally grown farmer products.
So here at UT, we are very committed to connecting our local farmers with new diversification opportunities and making sure that they're aware of these opportunities and these connections so that we can help them explore more value-added opportunities here in Tennessee. So we have started some small-scale barley trials in our ag research stations across the state. We are educating our extension personnel to make sure that they know how this all works, know what is necessary, and why barley needs to be malted. So we are excited about providing them with the research-based information that they can make informed decisions and learn more about barley before they start to grow it.
The Tennessee Department of Agriculture and a number of distiller and craft brewing guilds were also sponsors of the Farm and Ferment Workshop. Commissioner Charlie Hatcher says in a statement, TDA is all behind this movement. Hatcher says, quote, one of our objectives is to connect Tennessee farmers of raw food materials like grains and grapes and connect them with local breweries and wineries. This strengthens the industry by creating new businesses or expanding existing ones and broadens the marketplace.
Meantime, Zazerac is years away from their first whiskey from here, but the process and the partnerships are underway. And this entire movement is a creative way of toasting the future and finding further uses for Tennessee agriculture. Thanks for listening. I'm Charles Denny.