Celebrated Distiller Is Back With ‘Big, Weird, Eccentric’ Whiskey Project

Jake Norris is a well-known name in the local distilling world as the founding distiller at Stranahan’s Whiskey and Law’s Whiskey House. Now, he’s returning to the public eye with two projects in the works.

In the long-term, Norris and a team of spirits and hospitality experts plan to launch a distillery in Arvada. That project has not been named, is not operational, and has not been unveiled publicly yet. But, Norris says, it will focus on producing its own small-batch craft whiskey, with the added capacity to support external contract distillation projects.

But first, he’s launching a one-of-a-kind whiskey program, the Curated Barrel Project, which will include a quarterly whiskey-pairing dinner hosted at the future distillery’s home.

“We’re already paying for all that square footage that’s not being used. It’s a big, ugly warehouse. Fucking perfect,” he notes. “I want world-class chefs serving up totally memorable meals in a fucking ugly, dusty warehouse. It’s cool, and it’s real. And people should be there for the experience, not for the wallpaper.”


What is the Curated Barrel Project?

It’s a series of special-release whiskies released directly to consumers and meant to actually be consumed, not collected. Norris says it’s an effort to retrain consumers on how they interact with whiskey.

“I decided that I would really just lean into my favorite experiences, one of which is really digging into a bottle: tasting it, dissecting it, while I’m listening to some great music and just kind of chilling,” he explains. “And then the other one is having a really awesome dinner party with my friends and breaking out a bottle of whiskey that’ll blow their minds. Those are the memories that I want to build. It’s not targeted at the headhunters and at the whiskey collectors and people who are hyper knowledgeable about whiskey. It’s really targeted more at the people who have maybe fallen through the cracks in whiskey appreciation. They just don’t want to put up with all the bullshit that goes along with it, all the whiskey snobbery and all the tasters and intellectual jousting over little weird facts.”


The CPB will offer a membership program with at least eight special releases. Norris compares it to the annual Snowflake release at Stranahan’s, which he spearheaded in his early days there. The first release will be a seven-year bourbon, followed by a variety of cask-finished versions using rum, cognac, sherry, port and other barrels, released roughly once per quarter. These whiskies will revolve around a 75 percent corn, 21 percent rye, 4 percent malt bourbon produced to Norris’ specifications at Southern Distilling Company in North Carolina.

Bottles will be available only for direct-to-consumer sales, with about 400 to 600 bottles per batch depending on yields, and will be packaged with a zine that includes information about the whiskey, tasting notes, short articles and stories, some “goofy art,” and a QR code to a playlist intended to be enjoyed with that release. More than just a curated whiskey release, he envisions a full curated experience anchored in his roots.

“As a skateboarder kid, I definitely made Xerox-copy zines, and that was kind of the genesis of this, that they would get this package in the mail, they would open it, they would pull out the zine, they put the playlist on the radio. They would sit there and read the zine and sip the whiskey and kind of have this personal experience where all their senses are being filled,” Norris says. “I’m curating that moment for them. In my mind, it’s all kind of throwback ’90s skateboard culture kind of stuff. I do a little hand-drawn image on each label that’s a little bit different. Not because I’m a great artist, but just to personalize it — this is my doodle that represents this bottle. I wouldn’t be surprised if the way it’s branded and put together misses a lot of people, and that’s okay. That’s the risk I’m taking by doing something that’s not being workshopped and focus-grouped.”

The zine included with each release will also contain a QR code to reserve tickets to the 50-person whiskey pairing dinners.

It’s a much more casual approach than running or working for a large distillery — less finely tuned but much more personal.

“This isn’t supposed to be big-business whiskey. This is more organic. This is an art project, and it’s imperfect. Not contrived or performatively, but it’s just imperfect because it’s imperfect,” Norris concludes. “I want this to literally just be like, Jake’s doing a big, weird, eccentric art project. So if I mail it directly to people, I don’t have to fight on the shelf. This gives us an opportunity to connect directly with them. It’s essentially going from my hand to theirs in their home.”

For more information, visit thecuratedbarrelproject.com or follow @thecuratedbarrelproject on Instagram.