Tasting notes

nose

tart, barely ripe blackberry and a little citrus peel, with vanilla and baking spice underneath

palate

ripe summer blackberry up front, then caramel and vanilla, with tobacco and baking spice behind the fruit

finish

lingering; the sweet berry fades into vanilla, caramel and raisin, with a last touch of oak

Mash bill

65% corn, 20% malted barley, 15% rye. This is the recipe of the Leopold Bros American Small Batch Whiskey that the blackberry juice goes into, a sour mash fermented at cool temperatures and distilled on a small copper pot still. The blackberries come from the northern Rocky Mountains, harvested from late July and juiced at the distillery.

Why it's craft

The deep purple color of this whiskey comes from blackberry juice and the barrel alone, with no coloring added, and the berries are picked in the northern Rocky Mountains each summer. Leopold Bros blends the juice into its own pot-still whiskey and rests it in used bourbon barrels, a pre-Prohibition way of sweetening whiskey with fruit that the distillery set out to revive. The Denver distillery, founded in 1999 by brothers Scott and Todd Leopold and still run by the family, bottles every batch by hand.