History

Leopold Bros. is an independently owned distillery founded by brothers Todd and Scott Leopold. Todd Leopold earned his degree in Malting & Brewing from the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1996. After graduation, he trained at the Doemens School in Munich with a focus on lager beer production and has apprenticed at several breweries and distilleries across Europe. Scott Leopold began his career in production after earning a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University and later earned a Master’s in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. He worked early on developing environmentally sustainable production processes for Fortune 500 companies as well as designing wastewater treatment facilities.

At Leopold Bros. we are driven by hard work, humility and a careful attention to detail. We produce each spirit with the best possible methods, not the easiest, and strive for balance and harmony across our portfolio. We fuse heritage, craftsmanship and innovative design to restore the craftsmanship of previous generations while maintaining a preservative approach to this heritage. By reintroducing practices that were otherwise outdated due to inefficiency, and by staying in tune with nature, our spirits are a return to an analog style in an increasingly digital world.

Production/Manufacturing

In the mid-2000s Todd and Scott Leopold Bros. moved operations from Michigan to Colorado to focus exclusively on distilling. They opened a small, rented space in an industrial area in northeast Denver. Several years later they purchased four acres nearby and built their ideal distillery, including systems to create a waste-reducing facility through water recycling and composting. The site also housed Colorado’s first distillery malt floor and kiln, a larger space for all fermentation vessels and stills, as well as a dunnage-style barrelhouse, a tasting room and an education center. Leopold Bros. distillery as it stands today opened in 2014.

Production/Manufacturing

We are proud to use only the finest grains, fruits, botanicals and spices. We do not use flavor enhancers, artificial flavors or colors, glycol, glycerin or high-fructose corn syrup. We commit to using the highest quality ingredients from family-owned farms and orchards such as rye fields just 25 miles north of our distillery, corn grown in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, Palisade peaches on Colorado’s western slope and more. In keeping with traditional methods, we follow the Pre-Prohibition technique of malting and fermenting our grains at lower temperatures for longer periods than most distilleries today. We even ferment mashes to produce our own neutral grain spirit instead of importing it from a mass producer.

We malted our own Colorado-grown grains on-site at our distillery. We are one of the few distilleries in North America—and the only one in Colorado—using this method, which dates back centuries. Leopold Bros is home to eight stills in five different styles, and we are the first distilleries in the world in more than fifty years to run distillation processes on a Three Chamber Still, a truly rare and unique technical invention. The result is two dozen unique spirits.

Our on-site dunnage-style barrelhouse can hold up to two thousand barrels at full capacity. As part of our commitment to environmental sustainability, the entire barrelhouse is naturally lit by daylight and has no climate control, reducing water and electricity usage.

Products/Whisky Series

We produce a wide range of spirits with around two dozen unique variants, where no specific names appear for individual whisky or spirit series in the available material.

Visits/Experiences

Our facility has room for a tasting and a visitor area: a tasting room and an education center. In addition, the site houses a distillery facility with a malt house and a dunnage-barrelhouse, which provides a framework for experiences around the process and our sustainable approach.

Philosophy

We believe that hard work, humility and an unparalleled attention to detail are at the core of our craft. We strive to produce our spirits with the best possible methods and to achieve balance and harmony across our portfolio. We fuse the craftsmanship of heritage with innovative design and seek to revive the craft of previous generations while maintaining a preservative approach to that heritage. By reintroducing practices that were previously discontinued due to inefficiency, and by being in harmony with nature, our spirits are a return to an analog style in an increasingly digital country.