Tasting notes

nose

baked apple and golden raisin, with dried apricot, cinnamon and a custardy vanilla

palate

tart, concentrated apple with plum and honey, vanilla cream and cinnamon, the acidity cutting through the sweetness

finish

medium; tart apple holds on with honey and cinnamon, then rounds into caramel and a little oak

Mash bill

65% corn, 20% malted barley, 15% rye. That is the recipe of Leopold Bros American Small Batch Whiskey, the house whiskey the apple juice is blended into: a sour mash fermented cool without refrigeration, which the distillery says slows the ferment and gives a softer spirit, then distilled with the grain still in the wash on a copper pot still. The fruit is New York State apples, picked, juiced and added after the whiskey is made.

Why it's craft

Before Prohibition, many American distillers added fruit juice to whiskey as it aged, and Leopold Bros revived the practice with juice from New York apples blended into whiskey it distilled itself. The juice and whiskey rest together in used bourbon barrels, and the color comes from the fruit and the wood, not from added coloring. The family distillery was founded in 1999 by brothers Scott and Todd Leopold and makes all its whiskey from grain in Denver, filling each bottle by hand and writing the batch number on the label.