Colorado-based Stranahan’s has been rolling out a litany of particular releases over the previous yr, together with their first ever American single malt with a 12 yr age assertion. However the model’s halo launch is undeniably Snowflake, an annual bottling produced in restricted portions of (often) only a couple thousand bottles. (Although we don’t have an actual bottle rely for 2024.)
Over time, Snowflake’s launch has spawned a cult following, with lots of of followers tenting out in line as much as 5 days earlier than the bottles go on sale; Snowflake subsequently sells out in a matter of hours. All Snowflake bottlings are named after certainly one of Colorado’s many 14,000+ foot mountains. In 2024, it’s Redcloud Peak’s flip for a second within the solar.
No two releases are precisely the identical, and 2024 is Head Blender Justin Aden’s second Snowflake launch.
In talking with Drinkhacker, Aden stated he meant this yr’s Redcloud Peak launch to vary from final yr’s. Whereas the 2023 Snowflake was constructed round a smokier profile that includes mezcal and peated Scotch casks, 2024 is a sweeter beast.
“You’ll by no means go broke making a candy, fruity whiskey for the American folks,” says Aden. “However it’s a must to do this with some magnificence.”
Aden’s preliminary inspiration for Redcloud Peak got here whereas ingesting a Forties bottled-in-bond Outdated Fitzgerald bourbon. Through American single malt, he needed to honor a dusty profile he calls “deep, elegant, wealthy, stately,” with some fruit added for good measure.
To that finish, the bottom liquid for Redcloud Peak is 9 to 12 year-old Stranahan’s single malt, completed in all kinds of fortified wine and brandy casks from Portugal, France, and Spain. The whiskey was then married inside casks that beforehand held Hungarian Tokaji, American rye, and bourbon.
Let’s see the way it tastes!
The early nostril is brimming with vivid, ripe fruit and semi-tart fruit sweet. Sweet peach rings take middle stage, together with recent apricots, nectarines, candied pears, and ripe pluots. Aden’s purpose of creating a candy and fruity whiskey appears to have hit house, not less than primarily based on the aroma. Proper under that fruit bouquet comes buttery, confectionary-adjacent sweetness, a bit like still-hot penuche.
A primary sip brings loads of fruit, to make certain: icebox peaches, plums, brandy-soaked cherries, ripe guava, and papaya. However the fruit isn’t fairly as dominant in comparison with the nostril, and the aforementioned flavors are coupled with chocolate and a few mild (and albeit welcome) oak astringency. Alongside the midpalate, it’s as if the fruit itself have been macerated and embedded in a sequence of chocolate bars, transferring on a spectrum from mild milk to more and more darkish . Touches of bitter oak pull these candy parts again from the brink of cloying — an pleasant push and pull.
The ultimate act leans into sliced, tart inexperienced apples and prickly pear (the precise fruit as a substitute of sweet, as sweetness is dialed again however not absolutely absent by this level). The fortified wine casks present their affect right here as properly, contributing to a tart and barely tannic end that evokes fermented grape mash.
Stranahan’s stays on the high of their sport, producing a number of the finest American single malt round. It’s a markedly totally different Snowflake than final yr’s launch — and possibly a contact higher, actually worthy of the expression’s high-altitude fame.
94 proof.
A- / $120 / stranahans.com
Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey Snowflake 2024 Redcloud Peak
$120
