Last year Dan completed the Spirits Trail in 8 days. He was the first to complete it, but the first 25 people were all rewarded with a bottle from each of the participating distilleries. We picked up our bottles at the Wild Corgi Pub in Denver. It was fun waiting for our bottles because we got to know the other Trailblazers. We all swapped stories of our antics and the planning we had to do to make the trip work. A lot of people completed it as a couples and seemed to have a great time doing it together. Dan and I are excited to experience the trail together this year.
This year they will be presenting two bottles randomly selected from the participating distilleries to each Trailblazer, and every month they will be doing a drawing for one lucky person to get 40 bottles randomly selected from the distilleries. While we are looking forward to adding to our extensive collection, we are most excited for the adventures we’ll have on the Trail. All together, we received 41 bottles contained in 7 cases. Thankfully 7 cases of distilled spirits takes up less space than 350 lbs of mastiffs.
We headed over to the McNichols Building for the Colorado Spirits Trail Festival. For completing the trail Dan received a complimentary Trailblazer ticket which granted early access to the event. It was held in a really funky gallery that had caricatures of various celebrities. There was so much going on at the festival that I didn’t get a chance to read the descriptions, but what I did see was fun and definitely added to the atmosphere.
All 62 participating distilleries had their distillers and brand ambassadors present to talk to the patrons. They also brought samples!. It was so exciting to meet some of the new distilleries added to the map this year and it’s always great to see our old friends from the distilleries we’ve already been to. Highlights from the evening included getting to do a live video with the Colorado Spirits Trail talking about the trail and the blog. As usual we loved chatting with all of the representatives for the distilleries and making many new friends.
It’s impossible to talk about everything we saw but I will try to cover the highlights. One of my favorite new distilleries this year is Talnua Distillery. They are up in Arvada and have a similar style to an Irish whiskey. Usually I enjoy a sweeter bourbon, but their whiskey is extremely smooth and the flavor is sweet and delicate. The brand ambassadors were so passionate and excited to be part of the Spirits Trail and share their spirits. I’m very excited to visit their distillery and learn more about their process and of course add to our ever growing collection.
Deviant Spirits in Boulder stood out. All of their products are distilled from rice. Their vodka is sweet and has a wonderful feeling on the tongue. I really enjoy that they are using rice for their grain, and I believe it is the only distillery making their spirits this way in Colorado.
The whole night was so much fun Originally we planned (ambitiously) to go to The Block Distilling Company and The Family Jones but we were pretty beat by the end of the night and decided to head to a hotel and start the trail off fresh Saturday morning. Standby for further tales from the Trail!
Spirit Tails 