ACSA Member Spotlight
Mountain Rum Montanya Distillers crafts rum at high altitude while remaining committed to sustainability and social responsibility. BY JON PAGE
PHOTOGRAPHS: (THIS PAGE AND FOLLOWING SPREAD) COURTESY OF MONTANYA DISTILLERS
T
he story of a distillery synonymous with American mountain rum begins not on a Rocky Mountain peak or surrounded by wildflowers in a pristine valley, but at sea level on a small Carribean island. Montanya Distillers crafts, ages and bottles its rum at an elevation of 8,909 feet in Crested Butte, Colorado, but founders Brice and Karen Hoskin cemented their vision for the distillery on a 2007 vacation to Tobacco Caye in Belize. On the beach, Karen, who was working as a graphic designer, told Brice she was tired of giving her work away to clients, that she wanted to build her own brand. “We sat there and basically planned out the whole company right there,” remembers Brice. “We came up with the name Montanya. We knew we were going to make rum. We talked about how and what the sourcing was. That was when we talked about using a tiny bit of caramelized honey to color it and make the flavors pop. That all came together at that one moment.” Despite those seaside origins, the mountains loom large over this distillery. On that same trip to Belize, the Hoskins also visited Guatemala, where they discovered Ron Zacapa’s method of aging rum at high altitude. Today, more than a decade after Karen and Brice founded Montanya, the mountains define the distillery. The distillery benefits from pure mountain water, but perhaps the best benefit comes in the barrel-aging process. “The way that aging takes place in our environment is really unusual and unique. It is accelerated,” says Karen. “If we put rum in a barrel in the Carribean, whatever goes in those pores stays in those pores. Here, we have so much kinetic action going on every day in our barrels. I have been able to verify with barrel experts that that is a catalyst—the more access to the wood that the rum is getting all throughout its lifespan, the better.” Serving as good stewards to the mountains
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At Montanya Disillers, the distillery is located upstairs, above the restaurant.
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