I've yet to find a spirit that I really hate. I've had gins so smooth and floral, I'd willingly drink them neat. I'm a sucker for a good, smoky mezcal. Put tequila in just about anything and I'll pour it straight down my throat. But at the end of the night, after good-naturedly nursing cocktails made from just about anything a bartender can find behind the bar — the weirder the better — I'm still a whiskey woman at heart.
Mark Manger
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Rackhouse Pub
Half-bird board $14
Lobster mac $14
Beef marrow bones $11
Lamb burger $13
Rustica pizza $10.50
Side beer-baked mac and cheese $4.50
208 South Kalamath Street
720-570-7824
Hours: 11 a.m.-12 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Friday-Saturday
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Whiskey is moody, sultry and expressive. Terroir and technique give different whiskeys vastly different characteristics, making one a mouthful of smoke and another a gulp of butterscotch. Neat, whiskey is rough around the edges. Matched with bitters and stirred, it's smooth and refined.
Colorado has a growing crop of whiskey distillers, and the largest is Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey. Under owner Jess Graber, the company set out to create a new style of the spirit called Rocky Mountain Straight Whiskey, giving local sensibility to this inherently regional liquor. Like bourbon, the most renowned States-based whiskey (to be designated as a bourbon, the spirit must be made on U.S. soil), Stranahan's is aged in charred oak barrels. But instead of the 51 percent corn required for bourbon, Stranahan's is made with local barley and local water — and it's lighter and less sweet as a result. Two years ago, Stranahan's moved its operations into the old Heavenly Daze Brewery space to accommodate its rapid growth. While stills and bottling areas filled most of the building, the space in the front that once held Heavenly Daze's restaurant was leased to Eric Warner, who also owns the Barking Goat Tavern in Castle Rock, and partner Chris Rippe.
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While Warner stayed behind the scenes, in 2009 Rippe opened the Rackhouse Pub, a place that draws from both the rough and refined spirit of whiskey.
"Rackhouse" refers to the part of a distillery where spirits are racked in barrels and stored, so barrels feature prominently in the decor. But this is no dusty cellar: Rows of leather-topped booths and polished wood tables fill the dark, cavernous dining room; a massive and ornate bar, surfaced with granite, lines one wall. That bar's spirit focus is whiskey, of course, and in addition to Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey and special releases, it stocks bourbon, Scotch and Irish whiskey, as well as other craft creations, many of which are from local distillers. Those are available by the dram or mixed into one of many specialty cocktails, which also feature other spirits, such as vodka and gin, made by small-batch, craft producers.
Rackhouse isn't just a tasting room for spirits, though. The owners also wanted to create a taphouse that paid homage to Denver's reputation as the Napa Valley of beer, so they installed twenty tap lines that pour a well-rounded selection of Colorado craft beers in addition to one out-of-state brew.
The drinks list is so substantial that after I nabbed a seat at the bar on my first Rackhouse visit, the bartender had to stop back three times before I finally made the decision to start with a crisp cider and then ease my way into the heavier ales and, eventually, whiskeys. My menu choices were easier. In line with the Rackhouse concept, the board features hearty pub fare that the kitchen has attempted to refine with local ingredients; in addition to burgers, pizzas and wings, it also lists such trendy items as bone marrow and lobster mac and cheese. And everything's served on cutting boards or in metal measuring cups, a common gimmick in gastropubs that I was thinking had gone from clever to precious until I saw my own cutting board heading toward me, stacked with crispy, golden chicken and sided with a silver cup of glistening penne coated in cheese, sprinkled with basil and crowned with a single Ritz cracker.
The presentation was the best thing about the chicken. Although the cornmeal crust was delicate, just lightly blotted with grease, the leg and breast underneath were overcooked and dry, dissolving into gummy paste on the tongue. And the gloppy peppers on top and the slimy kale below the bird did more harm then help.
Fortunately, the macaroni and cheese was as awesome as the chicken was awful. Rackhouse pours Rail Yard Ale into the creamy five-cheese roux, which gives the sauce both a subtle maltiness and a hoppy bite, enhancing the sharper cheeses in the blend. Each piece of pasta was thickly coated in the stuff, each forkful augmented by the salty bite of the cracker. After I'd scraped the cup clean, I ordered a second round, this one with lobster and bacon.
Since Thomas Keller first paired lobster with cheesy noodles, the combination has become ubiquitous — and often horrible, since the dish is hard to time. Frequently, the seafood is rubbery when it hits the table, having overcooked in the few minutes it's been mixed in with the pasta. But not at Rackhouse. The kitchen nailed this, creating a gooey, satisfying, fancied-up mess of noodles, cheese, supple chunks of lobster and lardoons of smoky bacon. A dram of whiskey was just the thing to wash it down.
