Proximo Distillers

Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey is the brand that essentially invented the modern American single malt category — the first legal microdistillery to produce whiskey in Colorado since Prohibition, and the producer whose 20-year campaign for category recognition culminated in the U.S. Tax and Trade Bureau formally enacting the American Single Malt Whiskey standard on January 19, 2025. The Denver-based operation occupies a converted industrial building at 200 South Kalamath Street in the city's Lincoln Park neighborhood, walking distance from downtown and the booming RiNo arts district. The founding story is itself a piece of Colorado craft-spirits folklore. In 1998, volunteer firefighter Jess Graber responded to a barn fire on the Aspen-area property of George Stranahan — heir to the Champion Spark Plug fortune, founder of Flying Dog Brewery, and a long-running figure in Colorado's countercultural creative community. While fighting the fire, Graber and Stranahan struck up a conversation about whiskey. By 2004, they were running the first legal modern Colorado whiskey distillery out of a small Denver location, producing 94-proof single-malt from 100% malted barley with Eldorado spring water from outside Boulder. Stranahan's was sold to New Jersey-based Proximo Spirits in 2010, with operations remaining fully in Colorado and Proximo investing heavily in expansion of the Denver facility and the brand's national distribution. The flagship Stranahan's Original is the brand's anchor p…