291 Colorado Barrel Proof Bourbon Whiskey

A youthful, but powerfully flavorful Colorado Whiskey that respects the land it was born in.

Long before Michael Meyers was a photographer working in New York City he was a country boy raised in the rolling, Whiskey-soaked hills of Tennessee and Georgia. After the events of 9/11 he left the big city and returned to the country — this time the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at the edge of Colorado Springs. In 2011, he built his first still using old photographic copper plates from his previous life and started making Whiskey. And to carry forward the character of his new country home his small-batch Whiskeys from Distillery 291 are finished with wood staves found in the mountains above his home. He calls it, “Handmade the Colorado Way.”

291 Colorado Bourbon Barrel Proof starts with their core Bourbon. Like all their Spirits, it’s distilled in a copper pot still using local grains and Water run-off from Pike’s Peak. It’s a one year-old, high-rye Spirit that has been finished a while longer in a uniquely-Colorado kind of way — by adding charred aspen wood staves into the barrel. The mash bill reportedly consists of 80% corn, 19% malted rye, and 1% malted barley. And bother versions are award-winning, well-reviewed drams. But while the “normal” Bourbon is already bottled at an impressive 50.8% ABV, the Barrel Proof version arrives completely uncut at 64% in strictly limited quantities.