Woody Creek Distillers

Woody Creek Distillers works from 60 Sunset Drive in Basalt, Colorado. The town lies about fifteen miles west of Aspen in the Roaring Fork Valley, at 6,600 feet. Nearly all of the distillery's ingredients are grown in Colorado within 250 miles of the stills. Every bottle is mashed and distilled in the state and bottled there as well. The company grows Rio Grande potatoes for its vodka. It buys rye from Colorado farms for a whiskey made from a 100 percent rye mash. It never uses neutral grain spirits and never blends in base spirit from other producers. Distillation runs through custom copper CARL stills built in Germany. Spent grain returns to local farms as livestock feed. The founders were Pat Scanlan and Mark Kleckner, two engineers with an interest in agriculture who designed the production process. Mary Scanlan shaped the brand and now serves as CEO, and the company describes itself as women-owned. The range runs from a straight bourbon and a 70/30 high rye bourbon to a rye whiskey. Two gins and the potato vodka sit alongside them. There is also a William H. Macy Reserve, plus licensed bottlings for the Colorado Avalanche and for the Minnesota Wild and Minnesota Frost hockey clubs. The tasting room at the distillery carries the full line together with branded merchandise. The production floor opens for guided tours, and blending labs let visitors put together a spirit of their own from the house ingredients.