In 2018, nobody had heard of COVID-19 and ChatGPT was still in the realm of science fiction. But that February, Denver distiller Jake Norris was brewing up a project that is only now coming to fruition.
Norris gained renown as the head distiller at both Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey (when it launched in 2004 as the first distillery to open in Colorado since Prohibition) and Overland’s Laws Whiskey House a decade later. He left Laws in 2016 and since then has been “consulting from New York to California and even Japan helping out mom-and-pop places,” he says. “I’ve picked a few clients and gone deep, getting started before they’ve even built a distillery and taking them from ground level up through launch.”
Through his work-related travels, Norris met Pete Barger, co-founder of Southern Distilling Company in Statesville, North Carolina. In 2018, Barger made a batch of high-rye bourbon based on Norris’ recipe, putting it in 30 new American white oak barrels with plans to bottle it in 2020, but the pandemic got in the way. Instead, the whiskey rested and matured to the point that it became too valuable and meaningful to its makers to “auction off to a stranger,” as Norris puts it…