Nancy Fraley has her nose in your whisky. She’s the olfactory genius behind dozens of brands of whisky, rum, and brandy across the world, from Still Austin to Joseph Magnus to Virginia Distillery to Wyoming Whiskey to J Henry and beyond. Her path to freelance nosing services defies convention — she has a master’s degree in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and a Juris Doctor degree, as well as experience in marketing and events. “Nancy The Nose” is part of the “mentoring sandwich generation”, learning from Hubert Germain-Robin and going on to mentor dozens of blenders in distilled spirits, particularly in the whisky world.
“I’d been out of law school for about a year and it was very clear that I didn’t want to practice law,” Fraley recalls. “I was already very interested in spirits and in Tequilas and mezcal and single malt Scotches and such. I’d gone to a fundraiser where I tasted Germain-Robin brandy for the first time. That experience of tasting the brandies and learning about how they were made, centuries-old artisanal Cognac methods, I was fascinated. Fast forward a year later, I quit my job at a law firm, did some travel around the world, Morocco, Spain, Mexico, trying to figure out what I was doing. A year later, I was working at Germain-Robin. And it just all seemed so fortuitous, almost magical in the way it happened.”
At first, Germain-Robin Distillery had Fraley working on legal and marketing, but later she was able to transition into the production side of the business. Hubert Germain-Robin was no longer working at the California distillery by the time Fraley started, but she would soon catch up with him. Once she left Germain-Robin she met Hubert and helped him write a couple of books about distilling, maturation, and blending. She traveled to France often, studying with other Cognac and Armagnac master blenders.
“One of the big things that I learned from Hubert and that I teach in my classes now is slow water reduction. That’s something that at least with every large bourbon producer I’ve ever talked with is not traditionally practised. That was a huge thing for me and learning why it’s done traditionally with brandy and how it can be applied to bourbon and other whiskies and other spirits in general. Something else, too, was just the whole concept of élevage, the literal raising of spirits. The way I like to think about it, a spirit starts out as conceived between yeast and some kind of fermentable substrate. It spends time in a copper womb. And then when it’s kind of born, if you will, and it goes into a barrel. Élevage really starts after that.
“So now maturing that ‘spirit child’ as it were from being a baby, going through terrible twos to adolescence, and your goal is to raise it to be a mature adult. That’s where cellar work comes in. And rather than just the ‘set it and forget it’ methodology of once it goes into a barrel, you put it in a rickhouse and forget about it, it’s really tending to your barrels, seeing what kind of maturation potential they have, and giving them the right kind of maturation conditions.”
Patience and attention to detail are among the many things Fraley says she learned from Hubert Germain-Robin and are what she teaches to those she mentors now.
“Sometimes you need to slow maturation down a little bit or speed things up a little bit if it’s stalled, really being conscientious of what kind of cooperage you choose. And if you’re making a bourbon, for instance, obviously, you’re locked into using one type of new charred oak container. I like a yard-seasoned cask for at least maybe about 18 months to 24 months. It’s just all of the attention to detail. When you’re working for distilleries and you don’t own the distillery, you’re often fighting between when they want to release and when you think it ought to be released. So it’s trying to instil that patience in them as well to do things right.”
One of the most notable contributions Fraley has made to the American whiskey landscape is in this close attention to maturation. When she began this journey nearly 20 years ago, the number of distilleries in the country was still in double digits compared to today’s 3400-plus. The data on maturation was practically nonexistent outside of Kentucky, and some of those early distillers, who were choosing their methods based on what worked in Kentucky, made some significant errors. At Wyoming Whiskey the first barrels went into a heat-cycled warehouse with a 110 entry proof. Because of the arid climate, much of the whiskey was evaporating rapidly, and the whiskey left had an imbalance of water-soluble to alcohol-soluble wood characteristics. Fraley advised them to raise the barrel entry proof after they’d already figured out that heat cycling didn’t work in their climate and worked on their blending for a decade.
“The 110 entry proof was too low in Wyoming,” Fraley says. “We just weren’t getting enough of the alcohol solubles from the oak. To make that environmental adjustment, I changed it from 110 to 114, and it made a huge difference in being able to pull out a little bit more alcohol-soluble notes, but not too much the way you might do for a rye-recipe bourbon that might need a higher entry proof. Wyoming Whiskey where I came in after they had gotten started, there were certain practices I stopped like barrel rotation in order to be able to get more uniqueness out of the whiskeys. My time there was to really learn how bourbon matured best in a cold and arid environment.
“And maturation at that elevation, too, could be very slow, whereas I find when I was consulting for Ironroot Republic, and I’ve been working with Still Austin since December 2013 before they ever distilled a drop, what we’re finding there in Texas is the very opposite for our long-term maturation programme. The barrels we want to get to five, six, seven, 10, 12 Years Old, we’re really trying to retard maturation to slow things down and trying to figure out how to do that. That’s been a big thing, too, because I don’t want to impugn any Texas whiskeys, but we’ve all heard of the Texas funk, I guess, where things mature way too fast. So my goal has been to just not have that be so much of an element and to actually slow maturation down. We can use slow water reduction in the barrels for that, and going in at lower entry proofs and such.
“You really have to adjust for climate. You know I find Wisconsin, for example, with J Henry & Sons, it has cold winters, but it has a lot more humidity than Wyoming. That part of Texas, where Still Austin is, is hot and humid. So you have to understand how the basics work and look at a Kentucky model and understand basically how things work for it and then make the adjustments for your particular environment. And that, to me, is a big part of the élevage, too, being able to adjust for that and to really know your terroir, whether it’s arid and hot, arid and cold, hot and humid, cold and humid, whatever.”
Fraley has been teaching blending classes for 15 years through the American Distilling Institute, where she is the director of research. Between her classes and her consulting clients, she is directly or indirectly responsible for dozens of award-winning spirits.
“There are people that I haven’t directly worked with, but that have taken on these practices,” says Fraley. “An assistant distiller from Old Elk took a class with me and then went back and taught slow water reduction to Greg Metz. That’s a good case of someone that I didn’t actually work with personally, but who took the class. The distilleries I’ve really been actively working with have been J Henry & Sons since 2013, Still Austin, again, I started working with them in December of 2013, Joseph Magnus, I started in early 2014, So this will make 11 years with them. Wyoming Whiskey, October of 2014 until 2023. Ironroot Republic, I helped them get on their way. Robert Likarish had taken a class with Hubert and I was co-teaching that class. And the two of us just really hit it off.”
Fraley also lists clients from New Orleans, Haiti, Belize, New England, Israel, and she also works as a mentor to many people in the industry.
“I’ve actively taken on some mentees that I find really talented,” Fraley says. “Last April, I took them on a trip to France. I’ve found certain people that I find are really talented, and I’ve taken them under my wing, and we’ve started our own philosophical school, if you will. I’m encouraging them to go out and find their own mentees as well and to share these old Cognac traditions. I feel like I’m a steward of it and I’m just passing it along.”
