Tasting notes

nose

cherry pie filling and toffee, with a little vanilla

palate

bright, tart cherry and cream, then marzipan, vanilla and spiced oak

finish

long; vanilla and warm spice linger with the tart cherry, softening into marzipan and mild oak

Mash bill

65% corn, 20% malted barley, 15% rye. That is the recipe of Leopold Bros American Small Batch Whiskey, the base for this bottle, made as a sour mash and distilled on a copper pot still in Denver. The fruit is Montmorency, a tart cherry, from a co-op in Traverse City in northern Michigan; the cherries are milled and juiced before the juice is blended in.

Why it's craft

Many American distillers once added small amounts of fruit juice to sweeten whiskey as it aged in the barrel, and Leopold Bros revived that pre-Prohibition style with Montmorency cherries from northern Michigan. The juice goes into whiskey the distillery mashed, fermented and pot-distilled itself, and the blend rests in barrels that previously held its own bourbon. Leopold Bros was founded in 1999 by brothers Scott and Todd Leopold and has made its whiskey in Denver since 2008.