Colorado vodka: it’s as if Red Dawn happened, and the Russians whupped the Wolverine insurgency. Two decades after that fictional infiltration, premium vodka’s percolated the American zeitgeist as its most popular liquor. While giant multinationals pump out the bulk of mainstream product, small batch distillers push the vodka vanguard forward from unlikely places like Palisade, Colorado.

Why Palisade? It’s an agricultural oasis in the otherwise arid high desert near the Utah border. Ask any Grand Valley native about Palisade peaches, or the sweet corn from nearby Olathe, and you’ll uncork memories of summer treats that stretch back to childhood. For many years, local artisans have turned those fruits into wine, honey into mead, and more recently produced vodka, bourbon, and brandies.

While long coal trains rumble just outside their converted warehouse, the alchemists of Peach Street Distillers turn sacks of Olathe sweet corn into handcrafted hooch. Just inside the entryway, barrels of bourbon await the day when charred oak and the unwavering march of time yield a mature, tawny elixir. While their bourbon ages, this fledgling company sells two flavors of their Goat brand vodka, and brandies made from local fruit: apple, apricot, peach, cherry, pear, plum and grape.

Olathe sweet corn lends a rounded and faintly sweet character to a “plain” vodka unlike any mainstream high dollar brand. Their peach flavored vodka doesn’t screech with shrill artificial flavors produced in a New Jersey laboratory. Goat’s flavored vodka is to Norah Jones what Absolut is to Kelly Clarkson. Real peaches play a decrescendo of subtle fruit and nut notes during its fading moments in the mouth.

Despite the steamroller of conventional marketing that claims good vodka is supposed to lack any flavor or color, I prefer a vodka with character. Fifteen years ago, I tasted a bootleg bottle of Lithuanian potato vodka wrapped in plain brown paper that hid the pale golden hue of its magical contents. Its deep flavors upended my understanding of how a great vodka should taste.

With a blatant disregard for pretty packaging, that humble, unlabeled bottle held the best vodka I’ll never taste again. That kiss from a Soviet bloc supermodel in babushka’s clothes ruined me for any vodka after that.

Until now, that is. American microdistilleries are sprouting up in all corners of the country, echoing the micro beer revolution of the 1980′s. Small producers put out distinctive liquors from the verdant hills of Vermont, to the dusty Texas hill country, from Los Angeles to Bend, Oregon. If we could overhaul the archaic morass of liquor laws that stifles this burgeoning industry, we’d have a spirited revolution in grown up drinks. Unlikely? Probably. But stranger things have happened. Perestroika, anyone?

Peach Street Distillers
144 South Kluge #2
Palisade, CO 81526
970-464-1128

Across town from the Peach Streeet Distillers, Fred and Connie Strothman own the Meadery of the Rockies, Confre Cellars, and St. Kathryn Cellars, a consortium that produces an unusual range of fruit wines, hard ciders, port-like fortified wines, and mead. Examples of the fruit wines include cranberry, pomegranate, and sour cherry, all of which feature fruit forward flavors and high residual sugar. I’ve had good success using them in cooking applications like a Montmorency cherry sauce, and they pair well with spicy foods where their fruity sweetness is a welcome partner.

Mead occupies a microniche within the wine industry, with home brewers far outnumbering commercial producers. With very few commercial examples worth buying, its obscurity remains sadly assured for those without a home brewing buddy. Some commercial brands I’ve tasted are sickly sweet, and sometimes spiced to distract from off flavors produced in their fermenting tanks. In contrast, Meadery of the Rockies produces award winning meads in four sweetness levels. The bone dry version resembles an oaky Chardonnay, and the sweetest shows its honey origins clearly. I prefer the two products in the middle of the sweetness range. Their fruit wines are blended with mead to expand the line with six more products.

Brewing honey into wine presents some unique technical challenges. Honey’s antimicrobial properties have been known since ancient times, when Roman soldiers used it in a poultice to heal battle wounds. Those same properties require special strains of brewers yeast and some fermenting techniques specific to mead. Heating the honey is a brute force measure to defeat it’s antiseptic properties, but it cooks off subtle aromas and flavors. Strothman developed a secret cool temperature process, which results in pleasantly multilayered, clean tasting meads that are fun to introduce to suprised first time drinkers.

These days, wineries from Iowa to North Carolina chase visions of becoming the next Napa or Sonoma regions. With a global wine glut driving down retail prices, do we need more generic merlot crowding the field? So far, the Grand Valley has avoided the pitfalls of that me-too-ism. Maverick artisans here have rekindled the Colorado pioneer spirit by creating trailblazing products unlike any other on the market.

Meadery of the Rockies
3701 G Road
Palisade, CO 81526
970-464-7899