Stranahan's Whiskey Lifts the Curtain on Its 27th Snowflake Special Release

Stranahan’s Distillery has unveiled the newest iteration of its annual Snowflake special release, marking the 27th whiskey in a series that has grown into a tradition, a festival and, for some, a pilgrimage.

Snowflake began in 2007, when Stranahan’s co-founder Jesse Graber created an exclusive release that had whiskey aficionados buzzing. It evolved into an annual whiskey release and special occasion, with the task of designing and blending it passing to subsequent distillers over the years.

This year’s Snowflake, named Redcloud Peak, is head blender Justin Aden’s second since joining the distillery in May 2023. It features a collection of nine- to twelve-year-old malt whiskeys aged in Madeira, Port, Sauternes, Pedro Ximenez, Oloroso and brandy casks, blended and allowed to develop further in Hungarian Tokaji wine and American rye and bourbon barrels.

It will retail for $120 and be available in limited quantities only at the distillery on Saturday, December 7.

Tasting notes for the whiskey describe a nose of toffee, candied nectarine and smoked honey, with a fruit-forward palate of prune, peach, praline, raspberries and maraschino, and a sweet, round finish.
“I really wanted to focus on what I call juiciness — you know, jamminess. It’s more than just fruit; to me those are both textural. Juicy isn’t juicy without a hint of acidity, and jammy isn’t jammy without a bit of thickness,” Aden says. “It’s a very pretty blend. There are moments where it’s delicate and nuanced.”

He describes this year’s blend as a juxtaposition to last year’s Snowflake, Pyramid Peak (every snowflake is named for a Colorado 14er), which was a bold and muscular expression that featured heavily peated Scotch casks and the minerality and smokiness of mezcal barrels.

“This year, I didn’t want to go anywhere near that. I wanted to go in a totally different direction,” notes Aden. “I think that’s what Snowflake has traditionally been about, and that’s why we say no two Snowflakes are ever alike. This has been a longstanding tradition, and it was something that I felt really matters to carry on the spirit. It’s not just showing off. It’s always been about bringing something really unique and different from previous years to our fans.”

Aden approaches the task from a unique perspective, having stood in line for earlier Snowflakes before working at Stranahan’s. “I’ve collected bottles of Snowflake for a long time, and I’ve only been with the company for eighteen or nineteen months now. What I can say as a matter of fact, a lot is made about the bottle and the liquid inside it, but without a doubt, Snowflake is about our fans and the community,” he says. “I came at it as a whiskey collector and a whiskey maker and a whiskey lover, and now know without a doubt that it’s about the people.”

He describes the process of building Snowflake as a yearlong undertaking. Even when trying barrels for different blends over the course of the year, Snowflake is always in the back of his mind, and it evolves as he tries different combinations and as barrels continue to age and evolve.

“I think you’re never really not working on Snowflake. There’s never a barrel I sample and I don’t ask myself, ‘Do I want to hold this back for Snowflake?’" he says. “The iterations that you go through over the course of a year change quite a bit. I was confident, I was almost committed, to using certain types of casks that didn’t make the final cut.”
The community of Snowflake devotees has responded in kind to that level of dedication. Some will arrive a week ahead of the release, parking their RVs in one of the thirty or so spots available at the distillery.

“Some of them will meet up halfway across the country and caravan together," Aden notes. "There’s a couple of guys who pick up their dad from maybe assisted living or retirement or whatever he’s doing, and they come together — it’s their time to spend together. They get here early, and they’re regulars now. It’s a very special thing.”

Another 1,000 to 1,500 fans will arrive at the distillery's makeshift Snowflake Village the day before and camp out for the release. (Campers are required to pre-register for an RV or car-camping spot; registration and more information can be found on the Stranahan's website.)

The distillery has music lined up beginning Friday afternoon and continuing to midnight, with one more band lined up for Saturday morning. Tours, presentations on sensory analysis and coopering, an art installation, an ice luge, a whiskey snowcone pop-up, and late-night s’mores round out the Friday schedule, with food trucks on site Friday and Saturday.

The batch only numbers in the range of a couple thousand bottles, with sales capped at three bottles per person. Customers aren’t even allowed to begin lining up until Saturday morning, so Aden says the event is more like a tailgate or a block party than a line party.

“That’s really cool that they still show up in force, because it’s not about a place in line, it’s about hanging out with people and exploring Stranahan’s,” he says. “It is an event that we put on to show our appreciation for the people that support us. The fact that it’s a bottle release is almost tangential to what this is about. It’s about getting people together, playing music for them, having food trucks and meet-and-greets and hangs with each other. We have stories of people who have met there and stayed friends and traveled from all over the country and meet up here once a year just to hang out. That’s something that’s just warmed my heart, frankly.”

Stranahan's Whiskey Distillery & Cocktail Bar is located at 200 South Kalamath Street. For more information on this year's Snowflake release, including the full schedule for Friday, December 6 and Saturday, December 7, visit stranahans.com/news/snowflake.