Woody Creek, Colorado is probably best known, at least in my circles, as being the place where Hunter S Thompson lived out the end of his life. It is a small former mining town adjacent to Aspen nestled into the Roaring Fork Valley that is bursting with rustic mountain charm. It’s also home to Woody Creek Distillers, a craft distillery specializing in potato vodka and whiskeys all made from Colorado-sourced raw materials with a major celebrity “spokesdude” — William H Macy.
I arrived in Aspen on a Monday afternoon and checked into the Mollie Hotel. After a walk through town, I freshened up and joined a group of journalists from all over the country for a short drive to the Hobbit House on Aspen’s Two Mile Ranch. Upon entering the modern but whimsical home we were greeted by William H. Macy and offered cocktails by William & Graham’s Sean Kenyon, who is the brand ambassador and mixologist for Woody Creek. In the kitchen, chefs Gabrielle Burt and Katie Baum Hueth were preparing a feast of sea bass, wagyu, roasted vegetables, couscous, fingerling potatoes, and more. We explored the house, which had charming and whimsical architecture including a bridge from one room to the next on the second story, a sleeping porch that rolled outside and back in, and stained glass doors that are rumored to be a little too easy for bears to open from the outside.
We sat down to dinner with Macy and the founders of Woody Creek, Mary and Pat Scanlan. Dinner guests, of course, asked Macy about various movies he’s starred in and what it was like working with various actors and directors over his career. But then we got to the really important stuff: how did he get involved with a distillery and end up with his own whiskey brand?
Macy moved to Woody Creek after visiting for many years. His wife, Felicity Huffman, is from Woody Creek, and they bought her childhood home and have since taken up residence in Woody Creek full time. Several years ago someone had leased their farmable acre of land to grow potatoes, and that someone ended up being Pat Scanlan, who was growing potatoes for vodka. They struck up a friendship, and when Scanlan asked Macy to work with the brand, Macy agreed without hesitation.
During the dinner, Macy shared his passion for whiskey as well as his passion for his adopted hometown of Woody Creek. His beaming pride for all things local was woven into everything he had to say. At one point he lamented that he’s not yet considered a “Woody Creature,” but any fly on the wall at that dinner would argue he is certainly worthy of the title.
After dinner, Kenyon offered us another round of cocktails and we all retired to the living room, where Macy played his ukulele and sang several songs for us, many of which were about Woody Creek whiskey (and one about his dislike of his wife’s absence). We concluded the night listening to more stories from Macy before boarding the bus that took us back to Aspen.
The next morning after breakfast we loaded back onto the bus and headed to Basalt, Colorado to check out the Woody Creek Distillery. The bartender, Jo, started us off with some cocktails and answered any questions we had about the bar. Then Pat Scanlan led us on a tour of the facility, going over the history of the brand. Scanlan told a familiar story that I’ve heard echoed throughout the craft distilling industry — they started off with what they thought would be plenty of room and quickly discovered they were running out of room, so they started buying up surrounding buildings. Today the facility consists of four buildings onsite, a rickhouse in another location, and rented rickhouse space in Wyoming for additional barrel storage. The building that originally served as the barrel storage warehouse today houses bottling and shipping. One of the newer building and land acquisitions now houses grain storage, giving trucks easier access for unloading. Scanlan explained that the biggest problem for the distillery is what to do with the spent grains, and currently they are being trucked to the city dump because local farmers just can’t keep up and composting has proven to be too much of a challenge.
Inside the distillery building, we saw stacks of barrels of bourbon whiskey, banded four to a pallet and stacked two to three pallets high, awaiting transport to the barrel storage facility. Scanlan explained that they had decided to palletize the barrels after initially ricking on stackable metal ricks for several years because they could fit significantly more barrels in the space on pallets than on ricks and they didn’t feel it hindered airflow or maturation at all. Their rickhouses are climate controlled, most importantly for humidity, as the humidity in Colorado is very low compared to places like Kentucky and Scotland, and low humidity can cause too much evaporation of water in the barrels over time.
We headed over to the milling room where the grains are milled, situated right next to the mash tuns. An emergency rolling blast door separates the space, and dust control consists of a simple exhaust fan that is always running. The cinder blocks on the outside wall are designed to blow outward in the event of a grain dust explosion.
Blaine Hudson, VP of operations and master distiller, explained heads, hearts, and tails cuts to our group and took time to answer some of our more technical questions. At altitude, there can be significant challenges to the whiskey-making process. It starts with cooking temperatures — water boils at a much lower temperature at altitude versus sea level, 203 degrees versus 212 degrees. Fermentation is also considerably more voracious, which Hudson reports he mitigates using higher pH levels as well as anti-foaming agents for their 100 per cent rye whiskey.
Interestingly, Scanlan explained that when Woody Creek first started making whiskey they tried many different mash bills, including an 80/20 rye whiskey. Ultimately Scanlan decided that he wanted to let the rye shine through completely without any malted barley for the enzymes, so he decided to change the mash bill to 100 per cent rye and use exogenous enzymes instead. This mash bill has turned out to be Macy’s favorite and it is the one Macy chose for his William H Macy Reserve whiskey.
All of the raw materials used at Woody Creek for whiskeys and the potato vodka are grown in Colorado. The rye used for Woody Creek’s rye whiskey is Elbon rye, one of the only rye varietals that can grow in more Southern climates. Most of the corn used at Woody Creek is yellow dent corn, but the distillery has experimented with several heirloom varietals of corn including Bloody Butcher and Olathe. Both of the latter whiskeys are a 100 per cent corn mashbill aged in charred new oak containers, but the company made the decision to call it a whiskey rather than a bourbon, even though it legally can be called either, because both were so vastly different from the company’s flagship bourbon. The malted barley is sourced from Coors.
The distilling equipment is a hybrid system from the German still manufacturer Carl, a column and pot still combo that was chosen originally for vodka. Scanlan says they are currently looking at ways to get more copper into the stills for whiskey.
There were just four days left in the Aspen ski season, so I headed to the ski lift and jumped into a gondola headed to the lodge atop Aspen Mountain, situated at roughly 11,300 feet above sea level. We met with our guide, snapped into our snowshoes, and headed even further up to almost the very top of the mountain, a dizzying 11,500 feet above sea level.
Our guide was a naturalist who was trained to help us identify the various flora and fauna loving at the top of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Of greatest interest to me was the watershed. Colorado distillers are notoriously proud of their pristine snowmelt watershed, and the top of Aspen Mountain is the genesis. Colorado in general gets more than 200 inches of snow per year, and Aspen Mountain tops out at more than 300 inches. Aspen Mountain is part of the Roaring Fork watershed. The Roaring Fork River flows through Aspen and nearby Basalt before emptying into the Colorado River. Much of this water is filtered through the various types of rocks that make up the Rocky Mountains, giving it the optimal mineral composition for whiskey making and proofing.
Perhaps most importantly, this natural water storage system ensures that in the arid climate of Colorado, which has low relative humidity, farmers can still grow a significant amount of crops, particularly barley and other small grains needed for the beer and distilling industries there.
Seeing Aspen’s water source from 11,500 feet really put into perspective how much whiskey is tied to its climate.
Learn more about Woody Creek Distillers at woodycreekdistillers.com.
