Leopold Bros.
American
Small Batch Gin

Best American Gin, Wall Street Journal 2009 Hand bottled, hand labeled, and hand numbered, we have been distilling Leopold's American Small Batch Gin since 2002. Most gin is produced by placing spirit in a potstill and adding the entire range of botanicals in the still before distilling the entire steep in one run. Not all botanicals (juniper, coriander, etc.) have the same boiling point, so when a distiller distills all the botanicals together, searching for the best juniper flavor, for example, he/she is over boiling the coriander. When botanicals are over boiled, tannin-like flavors are extracted, drying out the final Gin. We take a different tack by placing each individual botanical in the still and distill them off separately. We carefully make cuts like you would for a whiskey: heads, hearts, and tails. The heart portion is when, as an example, the fruity-floral nose of the juniper is at its cleanest. After the heart has been collected, the refined juniper nose gets muddled and cloying, smelling and tasting a bit like pine trees. We discard this portion, favoring the cleaner hearts portion, and this lends our spirit its rounded, clean finish that is unlike any other gin in the world. We apply this method for the rest of our botanicals: Orris Root, Cardamon, Coriander, and hand-zested Valencia Oranges and Pummelos, carefully extracting the best aromas that these botanicals have to offer. The result is a softer, brighter, and more approachable spirit. In the spring of 2009, the Wall Street Journal held a blind tasting of all available American Gins. Leopold's was selected as their very favorite.

Raw ingredients from the best farms in Colorado and around the country combined with pure rocky mountain water from snow melt and our altitude all help to create an incredible environment for distillers. When I work events for the local charities I am always blown away by the quality of the spirits produced in the state....a young industry, extraordinary quality!  ...Given a choice I always volunteer to show off the spirits...Uncle Jerry