Grown Climate Smart, Township 23 Distillery announce partnership

Rich Palzewic

Staff

November 25, 2024

NELSON – Grown Climate Smart, a fully owned subsidiary of The DeLong Co., Inc., recently announced a partnership with Township 23 Distillery – a field-to-glass distillery located in Nelson.

Dylan Vaca, brand/marketing director for Grown Climate Smart, said the organization is a $40 million USDA Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities grant awardee that incentivizes farmers to do sustainable, climate-smart practices.

Vaca said Grown Climate Smart also partners with companies that integrate the commodities that come from these practices into consumer products.

“Township 23 Distillery is a strong partner for us because of its commitment to utilizing localized grain stemming from climate-smart practices, as well as being a fellow Wisconsin-based company,” he said. “This partnership exemplifies our shared mission to promote sustainability within the spirits industry. It’s basically any practice from farmers that reduces carbon emissions.”

Additionally through the partnership, Vaca said Grown Climate Smart and Township 23 Distillery will work together to champion climate-smart agriculture and its practices that lead to grains being used for distilling Township 23 spirits.

“Most of that ($40 million) goes directly back to the growers doing these practices,” he said. “In the case of Township 23, the goal is to work both on the farm side of things and the distillery side of things. It’s anything we can (do to) connect the dots and help them.”

Vaca said the $40 million grant is for five years.

“We’re currently in year two,” he said. “Having said that, we don’t just want to do this for five years and pat ourselves on the back – we want to make this a self-sustaining program for years to come. We set out early on to get the momentum going, so we’d like to keep it going. When working with people, it’s more than the initial pushout – we continue working with them into the future.”

The distillery side of things

Zach Hetrick, owner/president/master distiller of Township 23 Distillery, said he is excited about the collaboration.

“We are excited to showcase our commitment to climate-smart agriculture, as it aligns closely with our identity as a farm distillery,” he said. “By partnering with Grown Climate Smart, we can further our mission of producing quality spirits, while supporting sustainable practices.”

Examples of climate-smart practices Township 23 Distillery is currently doing, Hetrick said, include planting cover crops and using no-till practices.

Cover crops are traditionally planted on farms but Hetrick said they can also be used in gardens.

A cover crop, he said, is any crop grown to cover the soil and may be incorporated into the soil later for enrichment.

Additionally, Hetrick said cover crops control erosion, suppress weeds, reduce soil compaction, increase moisture and nutrient content of the soil, improve yield potential, attract pollinators and provide habitat for beneficial insects and wildlife, as well as food to animals.

“We’ve been planting cover crops for many years,” he said. “For as long as I can remember, my dad and uncle from the farming side did that. These initiatives go hand in hand with being organic – that’s an easy piece of the Grown Climate Smart initiative. That’s about as sustainable as it gets in agriculture. We have to do a lot of those things – it makes way more sense for us. When Dylan first reached out, I thought the program lined up well with our practices.”

Hetrick said it has always been important to him and Township 23 Distillery to be good stewards of the land.

“When you talk about the vision of when the distillery got started, at its core is to continue the legacy of the family – we’ve always thought that way,” he said. “There are a lot of methods out there – to each their own – but there is always a smarter way to do things. Essentially, we’re using some of the same practices – or somewhat similar – that farmers used hundreds of years ago. Of course, we have things like tractors now, but I think we were already certified as an organic farm in the mid-1990s.”

Hetrick said being fully committed to sustainable practices isn’t always the easiest thing to do.

“There’s no doubt that more traditional methods of farming can yield more product compared to using organic practices,” he said. “Sometimes, though, you might be spending a lot of money on the back end (with traditional methods) on fertilizer, etc.”

Hetrick said that using Grown Climate Smart practices sets his distillery apart.

“It makes us unique, and I think our products come out better,” he said.

Though Hetrick said Township 23 is “doing a lot of good things to be better stewards of the land,” that doesn’t mean there’s not more work to be done.

“The first thing we did right away was put Grown Climate Smart stickers on our bottles,” he said. “Everything out in distribution right now may not have the stickers on every bottle, but the hope is, eventually, that logo will be permanently on all our labels. It’s only been about a month, but we’ll get there.”

Hetrick said it’s also about educating his staff.

“They’ve seen the stickers going on our products, so they’ve been asking a lot of questions,” he said. “I’ve educated a lot of staff on what the initiative is. Those conversations are also occurring with the consumers. Most people know what organic is, but this program goes deeper – it’s about educating people.”

More on Grown Climate Smart

Vaca said throughout the Midwest, there are more than 200 farmers in the Grown Climate Smart program utilizing more than 360,000 acres of land.

“Those are all acres that are verified in the program,” he said. “The second element of that is partnering with people like Zach. Right now, we have eight distilleries we’ve partnered with Grown Climate Smart. All these distilleries get to put the Grown Climate Smart logo on their bottles.”

Vaca said the organization wants to be intentional, authentic and genuine about the program.

“It’s not like we’re reaching out to everybody and anybody and companies (that are) not focused on this,” he said. “After reading about Township 23 Distillery and talking to Zach and his dad, it was obvious they are doing the right things – it fits perfectly with Grown Climate Smart. That determines who we partner with.”

Vaca said Township 23 Distillery is the third distillery in Wisconsin that has joined the program.

“That’s exciting because it’s a Wisconsin-based company,” he said. “We didn’t necessarily set out to partner solely with distilleries, but I think we’ve found a nice niche there.”

For more details about Grown Climate Smart and its initiatives, visit grownclimatesmart.com.

Head to township23distillery.com for more information and product availability from Township 23 Distillery.