Tasting notes

nose

toasted grain cereal and roasted nuts, with dried grass and a faint, cool note of wintergreen

palate

ginger and cinnamon over malty cereal, with the wintergreen returning

finish

medium in length; nutty and malty, with cereal and cinnamon lingering as the warmth fades

Mash bill

64% corn, 21% malted barley, 15% Abruzzi heritage rye. Leopold Bros malts Colorado barley itself on the largest traditional malting floor of any US distillery, and more than a fifth of this recipe is that malt, a far larger share than most bourbons use, which gives the whiskey a nutty, cereal character. The rye is Abruzzi, a heritage variety, and the mash is fermented in open wooden tanks with both house-cultured and wild yeasts.

Why it's craft

Leopold Bros is a family-owned distillery founded in 1999 by brothers Scott and Todd Leopold, and in Denver since 2008. It floor-malts, mills, mashes, ferments, distills, ages and bottles everything at its one distillery in northeast Denver. This bourbon comes off a pot still rather than a column, ferments in open wooden tanks with wild yeast in the mix, and ages on dirt floors in an unheated warehouse where Colorado's seasons set the pace.