Feisty Spirits in Colorado is making a name for itself in its use of offbeat grain types as whiskey ingredients. We visit them to find out the details.
“I’ve seen it go for twice of what the auction price went for,” said Liquor Max co-owner Hal Rogers. “Most of the price is driven by scarcity. It’s supply and demand. It’s an old, reputable distiller, and we get it in maybe once a year. On the shelf it would go for $600 or $700.”
Maybe part of that high-dollar figure is the price of bragging rights, Rogers said. “A lot of people collect these things. And if they give it as a gift, it might create a bigger bond, and they’d get a bigger thank you.”
The Tourvilles planned to drink it, however. “It’s aged well, with a better aroma and a deeper taste. It’s a sipping bourbon,” said Randy Tourville, adding that they’d try not to think about the price of each sip.
ColoradoBiz Magazine
Colorado farmers see vast potential in nutritious dryland crop
December 29, 2020
But one superlative flies under the radar in the Centennial State: growing proso millet.
Proso millet is a drought-resistant grass that produces a small cereal grain after a 60-day growing season. That makes Colorado perfect for it.
Millet thrives on the Eastern Plains. Farmers grew it on 320,000 acres in Colorado – or about 1% of the state’s farmland – in 2019, with a harvest of more than 11 million bushels, or $61 million.
Those numbers represent about two-thirds of the total U.S. acreage (506,000) and production (16.6 million bushels) for the year, up from about 50% in 2015.