Within a few years it was keg parties and college, jumping over the fence at the first sight of flashing lights and heading up to the ski slopes late the next morning to pass the time before night fell and the festivities started all over again. Fast forward six or seven more years and the desire is still burning bright, but due to previously unforeseen circumstances - like age, mortgage, and fiancé - these days it often takes a good cause to bring out the party.
Alas.
Thanks to DSTILL and their Showcase of all things craft on April 16, myself and hundreds of the Mile High City’s other proud weeknight lushes were brought together at the McNichols Civic Center Building to sample everything from vodka to moonshine from 49 of the world’s micro and craft distilleries. By my count, a good 35 of them were from Colorado, and I distinctly recall noticing the represented talent stretching from New York all the way to LA.
I started off the night with some absinthe. Perhaps a bit extreme, but I walked by the Golden Moon Distillery booth three or four times trying to establish my placement in the room and each time I caught myself eyeing the product like the coyote that lives behind my house eyes my dog. I could not seem to justify kicking it off any other way.
Opened in 2012, Golden Moon’s take on the green dragon is one of the products that has helped brand the company. “We started off by making 500 bottles of absinthe,” said Brand Ambassador Noah Henry. “Then we started making other spirits and playing around.” For the record, this is the absinthe of legend, made famous for many in my generation by the movie Eurotrip, when the character played by the ever-so-luscious Michelle Tractenberg is caught making out with her brother after they both downed a good amount of the stuff at a nightclub. “We use antique stills. Our stills are all French and German stills from the 1930s, 1950s. They are very small. Our goal is to make the finest craft spirits and craft cocktails in the Colorado market.”
With that absinthe, they might not be too far off. But what about something to stir in, to mellow out that taste of spoiled licorice? Or, if absinthe isn’t your thing, perhaps you are craving a little vodka? Well, you are in luck my friend.
What happened next was, if I do say so myself, a dose of absinthe-infused genius. As I slowly walked around the two-floor event taking it all in, mingling with fellow media folk, and even raising a toast with the mother of DSTILL founder Rob Masters, it hit me- here is all this booze, almost every type of distilled spirit I’d ever heard of, all in one building. A small horde of Denver’s finest eateries sampling their signature dishes paired with their signature cocktails. This event is the ultimate orgasm inducer for every opulent booze hound, a near free-for-all of toasty bliss for the mere price of admission. Every vendor here was trying to impress, and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t been impressed so far. But now it was time to take it up notch. It was time to create my own cocktail. Or, at least, take a well-known drink and kick it up a notch. Something that wasn’t on the menu tonight.
So I stopped by the Altitude Spirits booth on the top floor, a great company based in Boulder. I had seen their vodka around before tonight but had never tried it. “We’re a little bit like the black sheep for this party,” says Altitude Spirits president and co-founder Matthew Baris. “Everybody here is all about American craft spirits and our company is about awesome craft spirits from around the world. We have a London dry gin that is actually distilled in London by the smallest licensed distillery in the UK. We have the world’s only fair trade organic certified rum. We’re all about awesome craft spirits from everywhere.” I was here for their sole non-import, however. Baris poured me some vodka and I headed back downstairs to grab some mixer.
“The color comes from the ginger root itself as opposed to chemicals or colorings,” says Josh Morton, the founder of Barrow’s Intense Ginger Liqueur. I took a sample in my glass, squeezed in some lime, stirred, and sipped. Not a bad Mule I’d created for myself. Plus, Barrow’s is 44 proof, a large jump from the typical non-alcoholic ginger beer generally found in the drink. Morton even showed me his recipe for a Moscow Mule Shot, which is made up of 1 part Barrow’s on the bottom, 1 part vodka, and a squeeze of lime. “I love the idea of using craft liqueur in a shot because people think a shot is down-market and craft is (higher). A lot of people take craft too serious, so I like the idea of humanizing craft liqueur."
I had it. I dubbed it the Mile High Mule. It’s so simple. Take the best thing we’ve gotten from Russia (outside of the Miracle On Ice, of course) and make it entirely craft, and entirely potent. As American as it gets.
I finished off the night at the booth of Wood’s High Mountain Distillery, which is based in Salida, CO. “We mash, ferment, distill, age, and bottle all of our products on site,” says proprietor Lee Wood. These guys focus in depth on what they do, with three types of gin, two whiskys, and something I’d never heard of, an elderflower liqueur. “We source Colorado wines, distill that into a high-proof brandy. We then take it and distill it a third time through our gin distilling process, but instead of gin botanical we replace that with elderflower. We sweeten it with a raspberry honey from right here in Colorado.” Certainly not a bad night cap.
This event, at its core, is meant to showcase small-batch American craft spirits, and they do an amazing job. It is well organized, full of very friendly vendors and guests, and the amount of hard work each vendor in the room has put it in order to be here is overwhelmingly apparent. What I noticed about every distillery I spoke with is that each one has a story derived from pursuing passion and keeping it local, and that is exactly what this industry needs.
The boys from Avery, Ska, Great Divide, and Odell breweries hosted an open beer bar from 10 o’oclock until 11 for those who didn’t want the party to end. As for me, the aforementioned fiancé is heading down to pick me up, so I’ll have to save the after party for another time.
Golden Moon Distillery: 412 Violet St.,
Golden, CO 80401, goldenmoondistillery.com
Altitude Spirits: PO Box 1437, Boulder,
CO 80306, altitudespirits.com
Barrow’s Intense Ginger Lqueur: barrowsintense.com
Wood’s High Mountain Distillery: 144 W. 1st
Street, Salida, CO 81201, woodsdistillery.com
Dstill.co
Tim Wenger is a Denver-based journalist, musician and avid snowboarder. Catch his work in Colorado Music Buzz, MicroShiner, Snowboard Colorado, and his weekly talk show on worldviral.tv
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Photos courtesy of Chris Haugen
