Tasting notes

nose

Dark brown sugar and browned butter, then cinnamon sugar, pine, cut grass and charred wood, with a floral, potpourri lift

palate

Thick and honeyed; cinnamon, allspice and black pepper over toffee, chocolate and freshly sawn oak, with a little leather and smoke

finish

Long; white-pepper heat that cools into mint and hay, leaving bitter orange peel and aromatic bitters as it dries

Mash bill

61% malted rye, 39% corn. This is 291's flagship recipe, the first whiskey Michael Myers made, built on rye that is malted rather than used raw, with grain from the Colorado plains. The mash is soured in open-air fermenters, and part of the stillage from each run goes into the next batch, which the distillery calls the El Paso County Process.

Why it's craft

This is the whiskey Distillery 291 was built on: the rye-malt recipe Michael Myers first ran in Colorado Springs in 2011, poured one barrel at a time at barrel proof. Every step happens at the distillery, from milling and souring the mash to three passes through custom pot stills made locally, and the whiskey ages in small 10-gallon barrels before its finish on toasted aspen. Myers, a former fashion photographer, built the first still from the copper plates he once used to print photographs.