Woody Creek started exclusively as a potato-vodka distillery, aptly located in the Roaring Fork Valley, which is excellent potato-growing country. The goal was to use local, in-season ingredients to create world-class vodka—and they did. In fact, Woody Creek even grows its own potatoes. But once potato season wrapped up, the distillery was idle, says David Matthews, master distiller and vice president of operations. So other spirits followed, including whiskey. 

Woody Creek offers four whiskeys: a 100% rye mash, bourbon (70% corn, 15% rye, 15% malted barley), wheated bourbon, and a high-rye bourbon (70% corn, 30% rye). You can also find brandy, rum, and plenty of creative limited releases. All of its spirits are distilled in custom-made copper CARL stills from Germany, and its whiskeys contain all Colorado grains. “Having farm partners that we’ve been using all this time means we’re getting consistent grain from the same people. Using the same varieties from the same place year in and out gives you that consistency,” Matthews says. 

You can visit the distillery for a tour by appointment, try spirits in the tasting room, and shop in its on-site store packed with plenty of mementos and whiskey to take home.  

Drink this: Woody Creek Distillers Bourbon
87 points, 45% ABV, $57
Tropical fruit, cinnamon, pepper, spice, and bitter oak

Eat Here: Wienerstube
This authentic Austrian-German restaurant in Old Town serves Woody Creek and other whiskey cocktails, as well as a selection of Irish and scotch whiskies.

Stay Here: Element Basalt Hotel
This hotel is within walking distance of the distillery and offers mountain views, pools, and free breakfast. 

Take a Side Trip: Roaring Fork River
This river—a gold-medal fly-fishing spot—is right by the distillery. Frying Pan Anglers is a local outfitter that can show you around Basalt’s waters. 

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Marble Distilling is the stuff of whiskey vacation dreams. The luxurious Distillery Inn, housed within the distillery, is a hidden gem, with five suites that include fireplaces and private balconies/patios, with cocktail delivery service available. Marble is a sustainable distillery, set to go net-zero this year. Efforts include a water energy thermal system that reuses the water and heat from distilling and a 100% solar-heated rickhouse. It uses only Colorado-grown grains, and Marble’s spent mash goes to local ranches for livestock feed. Products include Hoovers Revenge Ragged Mountain rye, Back Country bourbon, Fightin’—a triticale whiskey—and 5 Grain American whiskey.  

Take a tour and learn more about Marble’s whiskey at its Marble Bar—aptly cut out of a nine-ton block of marble—before heading back to your room. Following Marble’s core values, rooms contain sustainable materials and products, as well as elegant finishes. Ask about the Tour and Tasting package, which wraps a private tour and tasting experience into your stay for an extra 20 bucks. 

Drink this: Hoovers Revenge Fightin’
88 points, 50.5% ABV, $80
Lively with grain, cherries, bitter chocolate, and spice

Eat Here: Izakaya Carbondale ​​
This Japanese restaurant has a nice selection of Japanese and American whiskies, of which many are from Colorado. 

Stay Here: The Distillery Inn
This luxury hotel located inside Marble Distilling offers five dog-friendly rooms with fireplaces, free cruiser bikes, your own in-room Martini bar, and a private balcony or patio. 

Take a Side Trip: The Distillery Inn offers free cruiser bikes for day trips and also partners with Glenwood Adventure Park, a mountaintop theme park offering cave tours and thrilling rides.

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Leopold Bros. is well-known for being a sustainable distillery (Scott studied environmental engineering at Stanford). The entire 35,000-square-foot facility—including the nation’s largest traditional floor-malting room and Colorado’s first and only malting floor—fills only one small trash can per week with waste. The distillery is also famed for its three-chamber still—the only of its kind in the world, built to make traditional, heavier-bodied rye whiskey. The three-chamber still was designed to extract the maximum oils and flavors from  rye mash, but fell out of favor after World War II, when people began turning to lighter whiskeys. In 2021 the distillery released its own three-chamber rye whiskey. 

But Leopold Bros. makes it all, from whiskey to absinthe to liqueur. In addition to its three-chamber rye, it also offers a 5 year old bottled in bond, pot-distilled bourbon. This distillery uses open fermentation with wooden fermenters (most larger shops use closed or stainless steel tank fermentation), as well as dunnage-style barrel storage. Barrels are placed on the earthen floor in the warehouse, which slows evaporation to about 4% a year and yields 20 to 30% more humidity. “We let Colorado do its thing,” says Todd. “I can’t think of any other distilleries in the country that do that. We’re a weird place.”

Drink This: Leopold Bros. Three Chamber Rye 
88 points, 50% ABV, $200
Grain, red fruits, golden raisins, cherry, licorice, and peppery spice

Eat Here: Seven Grand Denver
Located in the LoDo neighborhood’s Dairy Block, Seven Grand offers over 700 whiskies.

Stay Here: Kimpton Hotel Monaco
This pet friendly hotel offers complimentary yoga mats and bicycles, and serves Leopold Bros. whiskeys, among others.

Take a Side Trip: Meow Wolf, an interactive museum filled with colorful, creative art centered around a fictional story, also has locations in Santa Fe and Las Vegas. Denver’s is called Convergence Station—an “intergalactic bus station.” Visitors can touch and play with the art exhibits, explore tunnels, find secret rooms, and wander through odd staircases and into a glowing indoor castle. It’s like another world. 

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In 2007, Bryan Nolt was an exhausted physician fly-fishing with another doctor friend in Breckenridge. “I was standing in the water, and a light went on,” Nolt says. “There weren’t many craft distilleries at the time. I had no idea if you could even cash-flow the idea, but I was working myself into a grave; if I could make this work, it’d be my escape, my salvation.” In 2008 Nolt traded in his stressful medical career to become a distiller, and he began using that same water where he’d fished to make his own craft whiskey. He released his first bourbon three years later. That’s the story behind Breckenridge Distillery, the highest distillery in the world, at 9,600 feet. 

In addition to award-winning whiskey (high-rye blended bourbons), Breckenridge makes vodka, gin, rum, aquavit, and more. Most of Breckenridge’s whiskey is bourbon, with its top-seller the 86-proof blended bourbon. Other popular expressions include barrel-finished bourbons (rum cask, port cask and PX cask). Its flagship product is the 10-plus year old Dark Arts American single malt. 

Five years ago, Breckenridge added a bar and restaurant, aiming to become a destination—a reason to come to Breckenridge, beyond the mountains. You can also set up various tours and tastings, and the best is The Founder’s Experience. Combine the tour with a privately guided flight tasting, such as the Cask-Finished flight featuring five of its cask-finished whiskeys. 

Drink this: Breckenridge Bourbon
90 points, 43% ABV, $44
Corn Pops, Red Hots, and oak

Eat this: Whiskey Star Breckenridge
A Texas-style BBQ smokehouse and bar with a plethora of cocktails and more than 160 whiskies on the menu. 

Stay here: The Ranahan 
This new luxury resort, not far from the distillery, offers suites and villas, bike and ski valet service, indoor/outdoor pool, hot tubs, and an inviting patio area. 

Take a side trip: Take a fat-bike tour through town, guided by Ridden, that follows the Blue River Trail, with stops at Breckenridge Distillery and Broken Compass Brewery.

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P.T. Wood and his brother Lee opened Wood’s High Mountain Distillery in 2012 with an 1880 German pot still named Ashley at the heart of their production. Today, Ashley is still cranking, though she’s mostly producing gin and an occasional limited release whiskey. Wood’s High Mountain is now working with a 1,500-liter stripping still and a 1,500-liter finish still producing Sawatch American malt, Tenderfoot American malt, Alpine rye, Dawn Patrol single malt, and limited releases.

The most traditional Wood’s whiskey is Dawn Patrol, but the rest are a bit “out there,” says P.T. “We try not to imitate anybody…let’s put our own signature on this.” They use mostly malted rye, but also chocolate malt and cherrywood-smoked malted barley—specialty malts that are more widely used by brewers than distillers. “But they bring amazing flavors you can’t really build through the aging and barrel extraction process,” P.T. maintains. 

Drink this: Wood’s 2 year old Alpine Rye (Batch 16)
91 points, 49% ABV, $55
Cinnamon, burnt espresso beans, alluring smoky bitterness, jalapeño, smoked chiles, and black pepper

Eat here: The Fritz
From small plates to comfort foods, The Fritz has you covered, with a selection of whiskies that spans all categories and great whisky cocktails. Try A Perfect Pearing: Rittenhouse rye, Poire Williams eau de vie, 477 Distilling coffee liqueur, and pear garnish.

Stay here: Manhattan Hotel
This boutique hotel, completely renovated in 2019, is located on the banks of the Arkansas River and within walking distance to the distillery and downtown. 

Take a side trip: Raft the Arkansas River
Explore the Arkansas River with locally owned and operated Salida River Adventures, which offers whitewater rafting trips from extreme to scenic. For a mellow float with incredible views, try the half-day Salida Town Run.

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As founder Al Laws puts it, Laws Whiskey House uses “grains that mass production forgot.” Laws takes a terroir-driven approach across the board: Fostering strong relationships with local farmers, using open-air fermentation, and utilizing Eldorado Springs water before distilling in a custom-made, four-plate pot still. Colorado’s thin air, hot days, and chilly nights also impact the production process. Laws makes four-grain bourbon and 100% rye whiskey from rye that’s grown at 8,000 feet above sea level in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. You can also find limited release, seasonal, small batch whiskeys, like a cognac-finished four-grain bourbon.

The distillery began as a passion project for Al Laws. As he grew older, he wanted to change careers and do something he loved, and whiskey topped the list. He opened shop on Independence Day, 11 years ago.  A one-hour general distillery tour costs $20 per person, but half of that goes toward your purchase of a bottle. You can also book a private tour. Coming later this year is a new two-story tasting room with a rooftop deck and event space, or “chapel” for “whiskey church,” a time to “gather together to enjoy the breadth of all things whiskey,” says Laws.

Drink this: Laws Centennial Bottled in Bond Bourbon
88 points, 50% ABV, $75
Chocolate, warming spices, nuts, and honeyed malt

Eat here: The Whiskey Biscuit
This American eatery boasts an impressive whiskey selection of more than 100 bottles. It carries many rare whiskeys and offers four different types of whiskey flights.

Stay here: The Ramble Hotel
A sultry spot and home to Death and Co. of New York City fame. A menu of about 100 whiskies and an extensive cocktail list are a bonus to the 50-room hotel’s sweeping views of the city.

Take a side trip: Explore Denver’s Golden Triangle Creative District, with more than 15 galleries and museums, the gardens of Civic Center Park, tons of public art, and quirky local shops. 

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Using copper photogravure plates left over from his photography career, distillery founder Michael Myers designed and built his own 45-gallon still. Thus, repurposed materials and a repurposed career are what launched 291 Colorado Whiskey. He released his first whiskey on September 11, 2021, the 20-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. 

Production is now much larger than it was originally, although every batch of whiskey still passes through that first still, as it’s now the thump keg to Myers’s current 300-gallon still. Distillery 291—named after photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s New York gallery 291—makes more than 10 types of rye and bourbon. And while 291 has helped put Colorado on the whiskey map, its products have barely changed. The recipe for the bourbon that Distillery 291 serves today is nearly the exact same as Myers’s very first attempt at making whiskey. 

Drink this: Distillery 291 Aspen Stave Finished Barrel Proof Single Barrel Rye
89 points, 50.8% ABV, $105
Papaya, nectarine, blueberry, grape, oak, chocolate, and pistachio

Eat here: Restaurant 1858
A Broadmoor property located at the banks of Seven Falls, Restaurant 1858 makes a great Colorado Mule with Distillery 291’s white whiskey. Pair it with cast iron-cooked Colorado Rocky Mountain trout. 

Stay here: The Broadmoor
This luxury resort carries Distillery 291 and other fine whiskies at many of its 17 on-site restaurants, cafes, and lounges.

Take a side Trip: Seven Falls
Hike Seven Falls, a breathtaking canyon trail along a series of waterfalls, located less than one mile from The Broadmoor. 

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The double diamond still is one major contributor to Downslope’s whiskey. The two chambers enhance the flavor profile, according to president Zach Thomas. The still was custom designed by Mitch Abate, Downslope’s head distiller, and crafted out of 100% copper that was entirely hand-rolled and pounded. 

Downslope makes four whiskeys: a bourbon (60% corn, 10% rye, 30% malted barley), a rye (80% rye, 20% malted barley), Double Diamond whiskey (65% malted barley, 35% rye), and a single malt (100% malted barley). The crew is comprised of only three people, who manage to produce all of Downslope’s spirits, with nothing sourced. Downslope also makes vodka, gin, rum, and agave spirit.

Finish off a free tour with a sampling of the whiskeys, other spirits, or craft cocktails in the cozy tasting room. Downslope also offers multi-day distilling classes and workshops.

Drink this: Downslope American Single Malt
89 points, 40% ABV, $65
Chocolate cookie, spice, chocolate-chip granola bar, minty dark chocolate

Eat here: Two Penguins Tap & Grill
Within walking distance of Downslope, it offers local spirits and elevated comfort food. 

Stay here: Hyatt House Denver Tech Center
This hotel feels like home, with spacious rooms, kitchens, and living rooms. 

Take a side trip: Cherry Creek Reservoir
Relax on the beach, swim, boat, fish, or camp at Cherry Creek Reservoir. 

Discover the Rocky Mountains’ Top Distillers

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