Vodka 14.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: COLORADO COOL STUFF - Brief article

Five years ago, Matthew Baris was hosting his friend Jon Weiss, a graphic designer visiting from New York. "I was forcing a lot of local microbrews on him," Baris says. "A few days later, he said, 'I'm sick of beer--who makes the local vodka?'"

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Baris did some research and realized that the nascent micro-distilling industry was light years behind the microbrewery world, then co-founded Altitude Spirits with his father, Mitch. "He called his dad and found out that my great-great-grandfather was a vodka distiller back in Russia," Baris says. First bottled in 2005, the company's organic Vodka 14 is distilled in Idaho in the shadow of the Tetons. Weiss...