In Spring of 2016, the residents of the Denver area will finally have rail service out to the far-flung airport on the eastern plains and better transit service for Aurora and east Denver. However, the metropolitan area and its residents absolutely need to continue investing in improved public transit. Slowly, but surely, we are heading in the right direction.
As anyone who has ever lived in a city knows, finding an adequate place to park your car is a nightmare. The metered spots, if you are lucky enough to find one, max out at two hours and when I am on a mission to get faded in the sun or reporting on an event for work, two hours is never enough time. The parking lots and garages are typically filled with business traffic, except for the ones next to Coors Field which cost an arm and a leg to park in.
I absolutely agree that drinkers such as myself should hold themselves to a standard of not driving sauced. With that in mind, we need to continue to fund sufficient alternatives. Not only for drinkers - we lushes certainly take a back seat to more pressing issues like cutting into the burgeoning traffic problem and ensuring that people of all walks of life are able to get to work, school, and about town independently. But there are three big things that, in my mind, are absolutely worth public investment - education, health care, and for goodness’ sake, public transit.
That said, I spend as much time as I can up in the Colorado mountains and to be honest, would much rather be there than in the middle of the concrete jungle. But I am, admittedly, a stalwart fan of a certain lackluster baseball franchise that generally seems more interested in installing rooftop party decks than winning games, and despite the frequent disappointment and significant frustration I can’t seem to stay away from the ballpark the way that all those anti-Monfort dissenters on the Colorado Rockies’ Facebook page are always calling for. Additionally, I spend a good 100 nights a year at concerts for both work and pleasure. With the season in full swing, downtown Denver just seems to have my name written all over it.
Denver’s strong craft market keeps me imbibing at a fairly steady pace no matter where I’m at so the idea of driving as any sort of fecund method of transportation tends to disappear from the realm of rational thought pretty quickly when I’m out. Unfortunately (in this one instance, at least), Denver is not New York or Paris or London or any other city with some semblance of efficient public transit. We do not have a subway system, - we have a mediocre light rail service that, after expansion in the past decade, currently services the south, southeast, and western metro area. Those seeking alternative transportation on Denver’s northern and eastern fringes are, in 2015, left to take the bus or a cab.
From where I live on the edge of Lakewood and Golden, getting home after a night out in the city requires either a light rail trip and a stiff walk or a $50 cab ride. While most of the nightlife happens further east, I made the decision to buy at the base of the foothills because I’d much rather see mountains out my windows than skyscrapers. The area, though, is quickly growing in terms of options for us scofflaws. Awhile back I talked about C De Marra, a whiskey bar I have now visited several times to sip on their in-house barreled whiskeys. A few months ago at the DStill grand tasting , I had my first taste of locally made absinthe from Golden Moon Distillery, and in talking with the crew on hand found out that their distillery is less than ten minutes from my house.
I ventured out there a few mornings back when I woke up thirsty after a late night show. The distillery is tucked away in the back side of an old office building. No big sign, not much parking, very humble appearance. Clearly the type of place that lets its’ product do the talking.
Proprietor and distiller Stephen Gould and his team welcomed me in and treated me to a full tour, led by Assistant Distiller Joey Stansfield.
Gould, not one to be shy when it comes to talking absinthe (or any type of spirit, really) then sits me down at the bar in their small on-site tasting room (they also run a speakeasy a few minutes away that serves all of their products) and begins sharing his story and that of his business. I came into this place a novice in the world of absinthe, but after spending some time with Gould I am confident that I can now hold my own should I encounter a situation in which the green dragon enters the conversation.
“You wonder why artists and poets and writers drink absinthe,” Gould says. “It’s because they like to relax and hang out in cafes and think deep thoughts and talk about deep concepts, and absinthe is just a real pleasant, slow, mild buzz.”
I’m hooked already. But doesn’t absinthe make you trip? Won’t you lose all control of bodily function and end up lurking around aimlessly, mumbling nonsense at a fence post?
“Most of what people know about absinthe is huey,” Gould says, explaining that absinthe is something that is meant to be sipped over a period of time, not consumed rapidly. The stuff even has an underground network of enthusiasts called HG’ers; a group of distillers and guzzlers around the globe that, upon a little research, seem interested in not only consuming absinthe but who have wholly devolved into a frenzied culture of wormwood activists seeking to set the record straight on their drink of choice.
“I have a hobby where I junk for booze,” says Gould. “I find old, weird, rare booze all over the world - antique stores, garage sales, thrift stores. I’ve got stuff that goes back 80, 90, 100 years.” I then listened as he told me that he has claimed to friends that he is not an HG’er, but was called out. I think I’ll side with his friends on this one.
Gould uses some of these old products as inspiration for some of the spirits at Golden Moon - the base of his R&D department. For him, it all started up in the Motor City. “I stumbled across, in the Detroit area, about fourteen years ago a case of Spanish absinthe. One of the big brands of the mid-20th century in Spain. What happened between 1912 and 1915 when Switzerland and then France banned absinthe was a number of your big producers of absinthe all moved their distilling operations out of France into Spain. Most of the brands were run out of business.”
Gould is by now an experienced entrepreneur, having started and ran multiple businesses both in the food and beverage industry and outside of it. He got his start in the craft beer world in his twenties. “I grew up working in restaurants and bars,” says Gould. “When I got out of graduate school, me and two friends decided that we were going to open a microbrewery. We were serious homebrewers. We went out and raised the funds and opened a brewery that down the line failed miserably. But it was a really great learning experience.
“At that time, we explored getting a basic federal permit to distill whiskey as well, and that’s where I actually made my first distilled product which was a malt whiskey. We basically took a beer mash and ran it through a laboratory still. It tasted horrible and we had no idea what we were doing, but that was 25 years ago.”
According to Gould, much of this Spanish absinthe was smuggled out of Spain into Canada, eventually down to Detroit via Windsor. “I’ve actually got a postcard from about 1975 from the Oxford Steakhouse, which still exists, advertising their absinthe cocktails as hangover cures.” Gould was working for Ford Motor Company at the time. He had tasted other absinthes and sworn to himself he would never drink it again, until he tasted this Spanish absinthe. Intrigued, he began to do some research. A couple weeks later he came across an antique encyclopedia containing old absinthe recipes. “If it wasn’t for this book, I probably wouldn’t be here right now. I started to flip through it and I thought to myself, ‘I know how to distill. I understand this and that and the other thing, I can make absinthe.’ The reality is, I didn’t have a frickin’ clue what I was doing.”
As time (and distilling experiments) passed, Gould became friends with a group of HG’ers. “I ended up meeting some very, very talented distillers,” Gould says. “They were really kind and took me under their wing and taught me the skills and steered me in the right direction.” He kept working on his recipe, something Stansfield says has taken well over a decade, until he felt confident enough to bring his product to light.
Since the birth of the concept in the late nineties, Gould’s absinthe has gone on to win awards all over the world. He has met and traded bottles with many of Europe’s most renowned absinthe creators. These days, Gould has an entire team working with him at his small Golden distillery, as well as the Golden Moon Speakeasy at 1111 Miners Alley in Golden, CO. “The reason that we are growing and are as successful as we are is because we’ve been able to recruit and build the team that we have,” says Gould.
Golden Moon Distillery, currently distributing in six states, has reached its capacity at the current location and will be expanding into another building in the next few months with the ability to double its production. Currently the distillery produces 18 different products in house, and distributes another sourced product called Gunfighter Whiskey. “We are selling everything we make,” Gould says. “We have limited distribution in three countries. We have won awards all over the world with our distilled products.”
Gould and his team distill and market a line of brandies that are all produced in Colorado fruit-to-glass. They have a Sweet Cherry Bitters, and their Colorado grain-to-glass single malt whiskey is currently resting in small casks in the distillery and set for release later this year. They also make two different gins. And, of course, their famous absinthes; Gould is now working on a new absinthe product made with Colorado-grown wormwood. For a full list of Golden Moon’s exceptional products, visit www.goldenmoondistillery.com.
After all this wormwood talk and a few hefty tasters, I step outside with an unopened bottle of Golden Moon’s Colorado Apple Jack, pull out my car keys, and find myself suddenly envious of those living in New York or Paris or London. I stand there in the parking lot, gazing west at the Rocky Mountains, many of the jagged peaks still snowcapped from late season storms, and quickly come back to my senses to happily call a cab.
Tim Wenger is a Denver-based microshiner, journalist, musician, and avid snowboarder. Catch more of his work in Colorado Music Buzz, Snowboard Colorado, and his weekly talk show on worldviral.tv
