by Sarah Horn

Their gin makes people swallow their comments about drinking a pine tree.  Instead the finish is orange peel and sweet floral.

Scott and Todd Leopold along with just two staff distillers make up Leopold Bros, a small-batch Denver based distillery that is among the most sustainable companies in its industry, recognized last year by the New York Times as producing the nations’ best gin.

“Half a barrel at a time, that’s how we do it,” said Todd Leopold, the head distiller.  “So it’s definitely very small batch.  The way they always describe smaller distilleries is that big whiskey guys spill more than the smaller guys make.  And it’s really quite true.”

The brother’s gin is unique from other types on the market and really illustrates the level of creativity and craft distilling can inspire.  While Beefeater London Gin puts all of the ingredients such as Seville orange peel, juniper, almond, angelica root, licorice and coriander seed in at once, the brothers make what is called fraction-distilled gin.

Standing in khaki work overalls – next to stainless steel vats filled with a mixture of water, grains and yeast that reach a little higher than his waist – Todd explains why gin is his favorite spirit to make.  They make the gin by distilling each botanical separately, then combine the different “cuts” into one batch and distill it one final time before bottling.  Todd describes the result as being “a little bit rounder and a little bit sweeter,” because you are getting the best aromas out of each ingredient. The reason for this is because each botanical has a different evaporation point, so the juniper oils will boil off at a different point than the orange oil will.

Every boiled and distilled remnant of the juniper and grains are shoveled into large blue plastic barrels afterwards.  These are given to goats and cows as feed.

“I can’t think of anything more vile than juniper than that’s been boiled and distilled,” Todd said.  “I can’t imagine eating that stuff, but I’m not a goat.”

The Leopold brothers run their business like they make their gin – they take their time making sure each part builds on the next.

“We want to hearken back to the old days of distilling,” said Scott, who takes care of the business side of the company.  “To hearken back to the days of the classic cocktails, where you start with simple ingredients and showcase what is great about that particular ingredient or that particular style and allow the flavors to truly come through.”

Since the New York Times showcased the quality of their gin and after being picked up by a national distributor, the company has seen a doubling in sales, especially in San Francisco and New York.  Bartenders at restaurants in San Francisco such as Beretta in the Mission, Nopa in the Panhandle and Absinthe Brasserie & Bar in Hayes Valley all feature Leopold Bros. spirits in their cocktails.  Winning two gold medals for their vodka and pisco at last year’s San Francisco World Spirits Competition didn’t hurt either.

“What’s great about the bartenders in San Francisco is that they get sick of things that are over done,” Todd said.  “So I think that’s why they like our alcohols so much.”

Todd and Scott identify with not following other’s leads.

Almost 20 years ago when Scott finished his master’s in environmental engineering from Stanford, he started working with distilleries and breweries.  They were wasting more water during their production process than any other industry, said Scott.

He realized that financial sustainability depended on environmental sustainability.  Scott and Todd devised a plan:  Todd went to Germany and Austria to learn brewing, then Kentucky to learn distilling, and Scott modeled the first zero-waste brewery.

While brewing and distillery companies maintain a standard ratio of about ten to one glasses of wastewater lost for every glass of alcohol produced, they have reduced it down to a one to one ratio.  Scott hasn’t heard of any other distillery of their size and scope meeting or beating that level, adding that he would be surprised if he did because it takes a really good engineer and distiller to get to that ratio.

The brothers, now both in their early 40s, have no desire to grow beyond their 7,000-square-foot distillery.  They want to focus on making their bourbon, rye, whiskeys, vodka, rum, liquors, absinthe and gin while keeping their sustainability practices in line with their production methods.

Oak barrels with aging whisky, rye, bourbon and rum line metal racks.  White sacks of grain sit on wooden pallets across from thick glass jugs filled with the “tails” – residual alcohol from the first round of the distilling process where the flavors aren’t as refined that is added back to a batch during round two of distilling.

To meet growing demand, they will add more German-made copper stills to the space they already have and still continue to keep batches small.  A machine labeler is the next big addition.  Right now they peel and smooth the labels onto the French apothecary glass bottles by hand.

“Everything we do is hand-crafted, we will never grow beyond writing the batch number on each bottle by hand,” Scott said.  “In essence that is our bottleneck and we have a tendency to walk before we can run.  As a result our growth is planned – we want to take one step at a time.”

Both brothers agree that worrying about profit margin and market share isn’t where Leopold Bros. is headed.

“I like being a small producer, we’ve been in this for 10 years.  We have no grand purpose to become super wealthy – we love what we do – I think there’s something a bit faulty with the idea,” Todd said.  “Once you start getting into the game of volume and worrying about market share – to me you are looking for trouble.”

It took years for the brothers to secure a loan for their brewery in Ann Arbor, Mich., which was where they began.  Eventually moving back home to Colorado after new property owners raised the rent on the old brake factory Scott and Todd renovated to meet their green goals.

It was hard to find a bank to back a company that wasn’t only interested in growth, but based a business model on reducing waste and improving efficiency.

“We were ahead of the curve 15 years ago, people thought we were crazy,” Scott said. “We got a lot of bank doors shut in our faces because of that.”

When the Leopold Bros. began distilling spirits there were just over 30 micro distilleries in the country.  Now, there are over 200, said Erich Harbowy who has been a Leopold Bros. distiller for eight years.

Other successful small-batch distilleries such as Stranahans in Colorado or Hangar One in California aren’t considered to be competition, Harbowy said.  Instead they are all working to push the industry back to its roots of craft distilling.

“We are competing with the billboards and the advertising and the big money alcohol,” Harbowy said.  “That’s who we are competing with. If we can get a micro distilled section in the liquor store then we’ve done our job.”