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Micro-distillery boom hits Colorado
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A lineup of Ska
Brewing’s sister company, Peach Street Distillers’
Jackelope Gin waits at the ready for Colorado consumers. Thirteen
individual small distilleries are currently operating in the state,
making Colorado one of the fastest growing markets for the
industry./Courtesy photo
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by Anna Thomas
t’s two o’clock in the afternoon, two hours before
the official opening time of the tasting room at Montanya
Distillers in Silverton. The place is already filling up.
Delena Aseere, assistant distiller and barkeep, is serving a
trio of bedraggled, weather-beaten snowboarders lined up at the
bar. Anywhere else, they might be clutching apres-ski PBR tallboys.
But here, they each pull on a colorful, custom crafted, decidedly
more foo-foo cocktail featuring the house specialty –
Montanya’s own brand of rum.
Founders Brice and Karen Hoskin, who also own Mountain Boy
Sledworks, opened the doors of the former brothel off of Blair
Street in November. At 9,300 feet, Montanya Distillers is the
highest altitude distillery in the country, and one of only 15
exclusive rum distilleries in the nation.
The Hoskins are part of a growing trend of Colorado
entrepreneurs capitalizing on a formerly neglected economic niche:
micro-distilleries. In fact, according to the American Distilling
Institute, Colorado has one of the fastest growing rates in the
U.S., currently boasting 13 micro-distilleries.
A micro-distillery can make any and every type of liquor, and is
set apart from its big brother Jack Daniels by some key features.
Micro-distilleries, as the name implies, are smaller operations.
The three employees at Montanya, for example, fill, seal and label
every bottle by hand.
If you ask Rory Donovan, co-founder of Ska Brewing’s
sister company Palisade-based Peach Street Distillers, what sets a
micro-distillery apart, he’ll tell you it’s quality.
“There are certain things you can’t rush,” he
says. “But if you put something better into the barrel to
begin with, you get a more quality product.”
That “something better” often comes in the form of
local ingredients and equipment as well as a personal touch and a
close connection with the community.
The wineries and orchards near Palisade, where Peach Street is
located, supply Donovan with the raw materials that go into his
brandies and cognacs. The juniper berries for Peach Street’s
Jackelope Gin are handpicked in Naturita. And while
Montanya’s beautiful, voluptuous copper still was shipped
from Portugal, the firebox beneath it was constructed by Hoskin
from recycled bricks and other materials.
Perhaps the most commonly shared feature of micro-distilleries
is their experimental nature. Local ingredients such as fruit,
spices and as is the case with Montanya’s rum, honey from
Honeyville, infuse a flavor and distinctive character that is
lack
ing in larger, mass-production operations.
“Most rums always taste the same,” says Hoskin.
“But here, we have single barrels. Barrel No. 2 probably
won’t taste like barrel No. 4.”
Hoskin explains that the barrels used in the fermentation
process are former bourbon barrels. Bourbon can only be made in
freshly charred, new barrels, creating a market for
“recycled” barrels used in distilling other types of
spirits. The barrels used to produce Peach Street’s Bourbon
are reused to age peated single malt scotch, or shipped to the
brewery in Durango to make oak-aged beers.
So why is Colorado home to such a booze boon? A number of
factors have been instrumental, not the least of which is the
slackening of so-called Prohibition era “blue laws.”
It’s these types of laws that kept thirsty Colorado folk from
buying liquor on Sundays until last July. Many blue laws governing
distilling are changing or being recalled following the recent 75th
anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. While it’s still
illegal to fire up the home still and whip up a batch of
moonshine, the easing of these blue laws does make obtaining
distilling licenses easier.
Hoskin’s calm demeanor reflects this lack of red tape in
getting his fledging business up and running.
“It’s been easy so far,” he says. “The
hard part now is keeping up.” He points to a stack of 100 or
so bottles of rum, ready for distribution. Just last weekend, there
were 444.
Colorado’s mountain climate is also a bonus. While rum is
most often associated with decidedly more tropical climes, the high
altitude air of Silverton is actually ideal for a rum distillery.
The temperature fluctuations at higher elevations force the rum in
and out of the pores of the oak barrel in which it is aged,
creating a smoother, more intense flavor. In Central America,
Hoskin says, after being distilled, the rum barrels are carried up
into the high mountains to achieve this effect. In Silverton, the
farthest the rum has to travel is upstairs to the fermentation
room.
Further, the affinity to buy locally produced4
goods is peculiar to community-oriented Colorado, according to
Donovan. “Colorado is real receptive to locally made
stuff,” he says. “For success, you need local
support.”
Breaking the stranglehold of mega-distillers is a task that has
been aided by an increasing consumer demand for something new and
different. The Tasting Panel Magazine found in a recent report that
“top-tier mixologists everywhere are using seasonal, local
ingredients … as well as supporting locally made spirits from
micro-distillers.”
If this David vs. Goliath story sounds familiar, it’s
because it bears a striking resemblance to that of wine in the
years following Prohibition, and more recently to that of the
micro-brewery movement.
While today the U.S. is fourth in wine production behind Italy,
France and Spain, this wasn’t always the case. Following
Prohibition, the U.S. contained only a fraction of the vineyards it
has today. The most popular wine was so-called “dago
red,” or wine that was fermented in the kitchens and
basements of working class Americans. As Thomas Pinney writes in A
History of Wine in America, Americans “had forgotten what the
civilized use of wine was.”
Research into the science of wine-making led by UC Davis and the
state universities of New York advanced the reputation, and
quality, of American wine. One has but to walk through the maze of
bottles at the local liquor store to grasp the exponential growth
of the American wine industry in the past 75 years.
As for microbreweries, at the end of the 1970s, there were only
44 breweries in the U.S., according to the Brewer’s
Association. Cheap, light-tasting lager was by and large the beer
of choice for Americans. Almost all imported culture and tradition
had faded from the beer industry, fueled by marketing campaigns
aimed at promoting that cheap lager.
In the early 1980s, things began to change as people craved the
distinctive flavor and style of the beer of their roots. A
grassroots homebrewing movement swept the country, eventually
evolving into the microbreweries we know and love today. As of
2000, there were upwards of 1,400 microbreweries in the United
States.
So, is boutique booze the new black? With the number of
distilling permits issued in Colorado going from one to 13 in three
years, it seems the sky’s the limit for Colorado
micro-distillers. •
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