Did a Farming Family Get Lucky? – by CHRIS GRETA
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The Still Life Stories
When you talk to Jan Hinrichsen, he’ll tell you he’s a farmer. He grew up wanting to be a farmer. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather were farmers.
Keep going back to the 1600s on tiny Fohr Island, stranded in the cold North Sea off the coast of Germany and Denmark, and you’ll find the Hinrichsen name on a farm here.
Writers usually make up stories like this as part of a big plot of mystery and intrigue.
But this plot leads to Jan and Marret continuing the farm, with the family, Lina, Jonas, and Anna.
But there is a twist.
Jan traded in the dairy cows for a whisky still.
Three magic beans.
It turns out Jan and the family are master distillers.
They’ve got a whole converted barn of beautifully aging casks of their own whisky that’s unlike anything produced anywhere else on the planet.
…The Whisky Nerd scratches head, surely you jest…
It’s true. Your author will never claim to be a world renown expert on whisky. There are plenty of those already but if they ever ventured to Tiny Fohr Island, they’d no doubt, come to the same conclusion.
It’s math and physics and pluck and luck.
Let’s talk about the math and physics.
Fohr Island was formed from the leftovers of the last ice age. Fohr and the surrounding islands were the high spots and silt from ocean deposits formed around them to make them small land masses surrounded by salt marsh.
In 1362, a storm turned Fohr into an island.
The Grote Mandrenke, or Saint Marcellus’s Flood, turned into a massive storm surge that wiped out villages, killed more than 25,000 people, and isolated Fohr from the mainland.
The name literally translates to “Great Drowning of Men.”
The marshes around these high spots became ocean. Not deep ocean because the ferry has a very precise channel to follow and the tides leave places where you can actually walk to another island if you know what you’re doing because when the tide comes in, it’s fast and turns your pleasant walk into a brutal swim.
But it created some amazing farmland.
Lots of rain, wind, and very long summer days mean the Hinrichsen farm can create fabulous barley.
Add to that the fact that the farm has been organic with cattle and pigs creating fertilizer and you’ve got very happy rye and barley.
I’m here in September and there are daily doses of wind, rain, and sunshine. Flip a three-sided coin and one of them will happen, often all at the same time.
Here, on the west side of Fohr, the North Sea brings its wind and rain onto the island on its way to the continent. The North Sea has its own ominous street cred. One imagines ships getting thrashed in the high winds and violent waves and ancient mariners telling tales in dark pubs. When you’re here, you feel that history. When the weather reminds you just how insignificant you are, you realize you are at its mercy. And the inhabitants of Fohr are all born and raised with that.
On the Hinrichsen farm, there are fields with a heavy clay, perfectly suited to grazing cattle. Living in Texas, I see cattle spread out over great desert plateaus, a few head here and there, picking out something edible where they can. The cattle here are living in the middle of a Las Vegas, All-You-Can-Eat Smorgasbord.
Acres and acres of rich, green grasses that get watered almost daily.
I admit to knowing nothing about cows, but I think these guys have it pretty good. No predators, no rattlesnakes, no fire ants, acres of green, no doubt, delicious grass and nobody bothering them. The calves hang with their moms, and they’re not stuck in a feed lot next to a freeway.
If you’re coming back in your next life as a cow, do it here.
And they get treats.
The leftover distiller’s grain from making whisky is delicious and full of protein and after every batch of new whisky, they get to chow down on the breakfast cereal.
I’ve been here when Jan takes the grain in the front of the skid loader and lays it out in piles. When the cows hear the engine, they come running, whooping it up with joy. They jockey for position and eat as fast as they can.
Not a bad gig, up until the getting turned into steak part but they’re probably not thinking about that. Maybe humans are being farmed, and we live our lives unaware that we’ll end up being pet food in an alternative universe.
During the winter, the cows get brought into the huge barn to huddle against the cold, and Jan says they can go out, but they like the barn better. They might wander out, but quickly come back in.
It’s like the cat wanting to go out until he realizes it’s cold, then stops and makes a quick retreat back to the warm chair.
So what do we have here? Some fields suit cattle grazing, and some have rich, black soil perfectly suited to barley and winter rye.
That barley is lucky too, just like the cows. Because it gets perfect amounts of rain on well-cared-for and fertile soil with plenty of sunshine, the barley grains are fat, sweet, and plump.
Perfect for whisky.
The other thing you need for perfect whisky is water.
Very few whisky makers on the planet can boast of such perfect water.
There is so much water on Fohr that there are pumping stations all over the planet to pump it out to sea.
I’ve been drinking the tap water here, which comes from their wells, and it’s wonderful.
I’ve always been a water tourist, relishing the cool, clear waters of the places I visit, and sometimes rolling my eyes and the liquid misery that flows from the taps.
Fohr Island water is at the top of my list.
Second only to the water that flowed out of the sides of the mountains on the Appalachian Trail.
That was my favorite water. Not only because it was delicious, but because it kept me alive.
But this water, nothing like it.
So now we’ve got the makings of a perfect storm.
Perfect water.
Perfect land and weather patterns to grow perfect barley.
But it could have all gone terribly wrong if the guys making the whisky screwed it up.
Fortunately, the Hinrichsens are part of a long line of stewards of this land, and they get it. And they got lucky.
“We only make our whisky from our own barley. We never buy barley from somewhere else because we know what went into our barley,” says Jan Hinrichsen.
“We carefully malt our barley at the exact right time, right here, watching over it the whole time, and only when it’s perfectly ready, do we put it into the mash tun and add our water and yeast.”
Most distilleries, at least the ones you’ve heard of, work on such huge volumes that it’s impossible to babysit the process in such detail. There are no shortcuts here. No “ahh, that’s fine” going on.
Maybe it’s part of the Frisian culture, or perhaps it comes from the responsibility of becoming the next stewards of a 400-year tradition.
“We built this distillery to be in the family for many generations to come. Our goal is to use only the barley we grow organically on our land. We don’t care to become a huge distillery.” Jan tells me. “We’d rather make a small amount of great whisky than to sell a lot of whisky that is just OK.”
Hell, most people can’t take on the responsibility of keeping their grandmother’s favorite China. Now imagine 400 years on a small island, on a family farm, caring for something that can be ruined by a few mistakes.
I’ve tasted a lot of whisky over the years, Scotch whisky, Irish whisky, bourbon, whiskey with an e, single malts, blends, cheap junk and expensive spread and I have to say, the whisky being made on the Hinrichsen’s farm is genuinely.
But it’s totally true. A lot of the island is seriously cute.
That’s why the tourists come. Some fall in love with island life and stay (at least until the first winter).
And unique can mean a lot of things.
You can have a friend who’s completely crazy, scary crazy, that you might describe as “unique.”
Hinrichsen’s Frisian Whisky isn’t that kind of unique.
It’s the good kind.
When you know the story behind the bottle, you can see why it tastes the way it does.
First off, it’s cask strength. You can water it down however you like, but you don’t need to and you won’t have Hinrichsen water.
Pour some in a small glass. Sip it.
Lean back in a comfy chair and let it wander across your tongue. Give it a moment.
There are a dozen flavors there. Some sweet, some savory.
You’re getting the best of the barley, complex and alive. You’re getting that afternoon rain on a sunny day that just appeared out of nowhere and is gone minutes later.
You’re getting long, sweet summer days where the sun comes up early and goes down late. The pleasant, perfect summers that bring people from around the world to this little island.
You’re getting that powerful wind from the North Sea that strengthens the stalks in the warm summer sun.
You’re getting that salt air from a sea famous for wrecking ships and carrying the Vikings to the same soil to live, fight, and farm.
You’re getting over 400 years of smart farming with family traditions on fertile soil that’s tended to and cared for and loved, not just worked to a sterile grit and sprayed with things unpronounceable.
You’re not getting any chemicals.
Jan and Jonas never spray the fields with garbage.
The Hinrichsen’s farm is a closed loop, locked away from the practices of huge, industrial farms. The cows graze on rich, green grasses in heavy clay soils for the perfect mix of proteins and minerals. They, in turn, provide the rich fertilizers that keep the barley and rye in perfect health, rich in complex flavors, and in turn, when those grains become whisky to go into the oak to age in the barn, the cows get the treat of the grain that created the whisky.
This reminded me of what the great comedian, George Carlin, said about ordering coffee.
“If you need more than two syllables to order coffee, you’re an asshole.”
If you need a lot of syllables to describe what’s going onto your fields… Do the math. It’s not much of a stretch to say “manure” in two syllables.
So becoming stewards of this great land is one thing, and caring for it for the next generation, well, one can be born into that. So maybe that’s luck.
But to turn this into great whisky, is that luck?
Flip a coin on that.
The Hinrichsen clan had a vision. Sure, raising dairy cows has been going on for generations. Their cousins who went to the USA in the late 1800s are still operating dairies.
But they realized the barley grown here was different. The perfect storm of storms, sunshine, long days, and fabulously rich soils meant he could grow barley that would make a perfect storm of everything needed for great whisky.
So, the family had many long discussions and made the decision to change everything.
Turn the barn into a distillery. The hay loft is converted into a malting floor and aging rickhouse for the casks. Turn the milking barn into a café. Sell the dairy cows and buy a spectacular handmade German still.
Seeing the result, leaves you thinking it’s always been this way, but when you envision the massive transformation one family did, it’s rather mind-boggling.
Marret turned the milking barn into one of the most welcoming and comfortable cafés I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world. She’s serving up some of the best food and desserts, all from scratch, all by hand, that I’ve ever tasted.
Personally, I’m a picky jerk when it comes to restaurants and the food served. I can instantly take in the room and know where I want to sit and where I don’t want to sit, and I’ll let reception know.
There isn’t a bad seat in Marret’s café. The music is perfect; the lighting is perfect. The windows from the old barn have been preserved with new secondary windows to keep out the cold but let in the natural light.
There are racks and racks of Hinrichsen’s homemade jars of everything from currywurst to locally picked jams and her own BBQ sauce that beats anything from Texas.
And a lot of whisky. A whole wall of whisky.
And the old hay loft?
Reinforce the vast, airy, and spacious barn to carry racks and racks of aging whisky. As you come up the stairs, the first thing you see is the high, old barn roof. Bits of light sneaking through massive timbers. You spy some casks, both new and ancient, then when you’ve reached the top, you see the casks laid out, quietly sleeping.
It reminds me of that final scene in the first Indiana Jones movie where they put The Arc of The Covenant in a wooden box, hammer it closed, and roll it down an aisle of wooden cases, and the camera pulls back, and it goes on forever.
It’s a bit like that.
Where the whisky is sleeping is one of those sights that holds your gaze. The perfect light, the browns and ochers, and the atmosphere of a sacred place.
And when you take the ancient and battered copper whisky thief and push it deep into a cask to pull out a sample and let it slip into a tasting glass, you realize that the 400 years leading up to all this wasn’t luck.
It was the result of generations of hard work, good decisions, natural talents, and learned skills.
And maybe a little luck.
All this together adds up to one family that got lucky, but when you think about luck, isn’t it really the ability to recognize an opportunity and know when and how to turn that into success?
So, I guess you can say the Hinrichsens got lucky.
They all worked hard to get lucky.
Now it’s your turn to get lucky.
It’s not easy to get to Fohr Island. It’s at the end of a bunch of train lines, across the sea on a ferry, and at the other end of an island that’s unlike any island on Earth.
Have Marret’s food in her café that feels better than home. Spoil yourself with The Best Burger At The End of The World.
And now let Jan or Jonas or Anna or Lina take you on the distillery tour and watch as they use that battered whisky thief to pull a dram from a dusty oak barrel and waltz it into the secret tasting room that is perhaps the coziest room on the planet and savor the thing.
That’s luck.
That’s Kismet.
Knowing how to be at the right place at the right time.
And when you go home, take a bottle with you.
You got lucky and found the source of the Nile, so you’d better take back some proof.
Yeah, a farming family got lucky, and now you can too.
- Chris Greta -
Sep 18, 2025