There are some trails that reward you with a view, and some that reward you with sore calves and the kind of tiredness that makes a good drink feel earned. On a hiking trip in Colorado Springs this spring, I found myself at both ends of that spectrum: the Schubarth Trail was gorgeous and manageable, while the Seven Bridges trail was a bit more of a statement about what kind of shape I’m actually in. Afterward, we stopped into a local liquor store, and I picked up four bottles from Distillery 291 — every single one of them so good that they ended up making the flight home with me. The Big Horn Bourbon, the newest addition to their lineup (clocking in at a breathtaking 132.8 proof), was the one I was most curious about. And at $130, it had better justify its existence.
History
Distillery 291 has one of those origin stories that sounds like a movie pitch, except it’s entirely real. The distillery was founded in 2011 by Michael Myers (not the horror villain and not the comedian), a Georgia native who grew up on a family farm in Sandy Springs, just north of Atlanta. His family also raised Tennessee walking horses on a property in Flat Creek, Tennessee, situated between the Jack Daniel’s Distillery and Cascade Hollow Distilling Co.
Myers attended the Savannah College of Art and Design, where his dorm room happened to be number 291 — a number that would later take on a second layer of meaning when he discovered that photographer Alfred Stieglitz had opened the first gallery dedicated solely to photography at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City back in 1907. He took it as a sign and built a successful career in fashion and beauty photography in New York City, eventually living just a few blocks from the World Trade Center.
On September 11, 2001, Myers was walking his youngest son to school when the first plane hit. The family eventually relocated to Colorado Springs, and what was supposed to be temporary became permanent. For nearly a decade, Myers continued commuting back to New York for photography assignments. The turning point came in 2010, on a flight back to Colorado after a magazine shoot, when he read an article about Steven Grasse, the marketing mind behind Hendrick’s Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum. Having grown up in Georgia and Tennessee, he’d been around whiskey his entire life. The leap didn’t feel as far as it might seem from the outside.
Here’s where it gets interesting: a proper copper pot still from a reputable manufacturer would have run upward of $50,000… not exactly pocket change for a career-changer. So instead, Myers built his own. He had previously exhibited a series of photogravure prints — a process where images are etched onto copper plates — at a gallery in Tribeca. He drew up the dimensions for a still, made a paper mock-up, and brought seven copper plates from his art exhibit to a local welder. A whiskey still, built from photographs. Today, a much larger 300-gallon still handles the primary distillation, but the original still continues to operate as a doubling still… meaning every drop of 291 whiskey still flows through those original seven copper plates from Myers’ photography career.
A series of delays pushed the project through the summer of 2011, and the still wasn’t ready until early September. Myers decided to wait until September 11th to run his first batch — remaking the anniversary into something about creation rather than loss. The name “291” tied everything together: dorm room, gallery, and now distillery. For three years, he worked solo, distilling, aging, blending, and bottling thirty-gallon batches inside a three-hundred-square-foot facility.
Today, Distillery 291 operates out of a much larger space in Colorado Springs, with head distiller Eric Jett working alongside Myers. The operation is still small by industry standards (for comparison, the big Kentucky distilleries probably spill more whiskey than 291 makes in a year) but the trophy case is absurd for a craft operation: World’s Best Rye (2018 World Whiskies Awards), World’s Best Wheat (2021), Icons of Whisky 2022 American Craft Producer of the Year, 2023 Colorado Distillery of the Year, nine Liquid Golds from Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible, and multiple Double Golds at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
Critically, Distillery 291 remains independently owned and operated by Michael Myers. No corporate parent company. No multinational lurking behind the curtain. Nearly fifteen years in, this is still a genuinely independent craft distillery, and at this level of recognition, that’s increasingly rare.
Product
- Learn More: What Is Bourbon Whiskey?
The Big Horn Bourbon is the newest addition to 291’s signature lineup, built on what the distillery calls a high-rye mash bill: 75% corn, 21% rye, and 4% malted barley. That puts it squarely in high-rye bourbon territory, comparable in rye content to something like a Four Roses OBSV recipe. Notably, this is a different grain bill from other 291 bourbon expressions. The “Bad Guy” bourbon that Dan reviewed back in 2024, for example, features a four-grain mashbill of corn, wheat, malted rye, and smoked barley. The Big Horn is a more traditional bourbon build but with that higher-than-typical rye percentage for added spice and complexity.
Like all 291 whiskeys, the mash is fermented in open-air fermenters. This allows for some ambient yeast from the distillery and the local area to contribute to the fermentation process in addition to the lab grown yeast normally used, which adds a bit of local flavor and influence to the process.
The mildly alcoholic mixture is then triple-distilled through custom, locally-made copper pot stills, including that original still built from copper photography plates. Distillery 291 also employs what they call the “El Paso County Process”: a proprietary technique that recycles secondary stillage back into the mash — their Colorado twist on the traditional sour mash concept where the “cut” portions of previous distillation runs are recycled and re-distilled in future runs.
Once distilled, the whiskey is aged in virgin, heavily charred American white oak barrels for an undisclosed period. 291 has historically used smaller-format barrels, which accelerate the aging process through increased surface-area-to-volume contact. This is especially important given the high altitude of their distillery: there is less oxygen available to interact with the whiskey and create those delicious flavors that we all know and love, and the smaller barrels increase the surface area of oxygen and oak available to the whiskey. When properly matured, the whiskey is removed from the oak barrels and finished with toasted Aspen wood staves (harvested from nearby forests) giving it that distinctive Colorado character that runs through all 291 expressions. The whiskey is then bottled, corked, and caged by hand.
Now, the label details. This bottle reads “Distilled & Bottled by Distillery 291, Colorado Springs, CO” which is exactly what you want to see. This isn’t sourced. This isn’t “produced by” sleight of hand. They made this, grain to barrel to bottle. There’s no age statement, which is worth noting, but given the color and depth of flavor, whatever combination of barrel size, char level, and Aspen stave finishing they’re doing is clearly working.
And the proof is no joke: 66.4% ABV / 132.8 proof. This is bottled at barrel proof with only a slight cut of Rocky Mountain water. You are getting the full, unvarnished experience.
Packaging
The bottle is a tall, clean, cylindrical shape in clear glass — and I mean clear. You can see every bit of that dark amber liquid inside, which is exactly how it should be. The glass is on the thinner side, nothing particularly heavy or premium-feeling in hand, but the proportions are right and it doesn’t feel cheap.
The closure is likely what’s going to get your attention. The distillery uses all cork stoppers, but the real star of that specific side show is the wire cage around the cork. It’s exactly like the ones you see around a bottle of sparkling wine (except only three turns needed to open it instead of five) and gives the bottle a very rustic feel while also providing a very practical and reusable system for keeping the spirits from unintentionally escaping. I appreciated this extra bit of security as my bottles sat snugly seated in my checked bag on the flight back home.
The label is a dark, nearly black rectangle that occupies two-thirds of the bottle. It borders on taking up too much real estate — I’d love to see a more of that beautiful whiskey shining through the glass — but the design itself is genuinely compelling. “291 BIG HORN” is rendered in what looks like hand-painted gold and white lettering, with “Colorado Bourbon Whiskey” flowing beneath it in script, followed by production details in smaller handwritten text. It looks like someone actually wrote on the bottle with a paint pen. The effect lands somewhere between “artist’s studio” and “ghost town saloon” — which, for a distillery founded by a fashion photographer chasing the spirit of the old west, is exactly the point. The handwritten aesthetic is consistent across the 291 lineup, and it works.
Interestingly, it looks like these bottles are numbered individually. Once again tying together the world of art and whiskey, this is a practice very common with engravers and print makers where they will make a series of prints, individually number them, and break the engraving plate at the end of the process. That’s also something that brands like Blanton’s pioneered with whiskey, and I love how it works here.
On the shelf, this bottle catches the eye. The dark label against the amber liquid, the gold lettering, the simple cork — it looks like it costs $130. The design matches the ask, which isn’t always the case in the craft world.
Neat
The color on this one is striking: a rich, dark amber that sits in the glass like the caramelized top of a good flan. Significantly darker than you’d expect from a younger craft bourbon, and the Aspen stave finish is almost certainly doing heavy lifting here.
On the nose, there’s a richness that arrives immediately — sweet and layered. Raisins and ripe pear lead, followed by moderate vanilla and brown sugar. Then there’s this distinctive cedar shaving note that’s clearly the Aspen stave influence. It’s a unique nose, not your typical bourbon profile.
But then you take a sip and — wham. The alcohol hits you like a freight train. At 132.8 proof, this thing is hot, and if you go in unprepared, it will punish you for your hubris. This reminded me a lot of my experience reviewing the Old Forester Single Barrel Barrel Strength, which sits at 65.4% ABV. In both experiences, I was similarly floored by the first sip, where the combination of high alcohol and powerful flavors damn near knocked me out of my chair. The Big Horn lands in the same territory at 66.4%, and the experience is remarkably similar: high-proof bourbons that reward patience but demand respect on the first approach.
Once the initial fireball subsides, toasted brown sugar and caramel emerge, braided with those cedar shavings — the Aspen stave fingerprint that 291 weaves through all their whiskeys. Dark chocolate surfaces as a deep, persistent base note that anchors everything. The finish is long and warm, with chocolate lingering alongside cedar, like standing in a woodworker’s shop where someone just melted a bar of baking chocolate on the stove.
It’s interesting and complex, but the proof makes it a challenging pour. This is a bourbon that’s daring you to drink it straight.
On Ice
Generally speaking, adding ice to a spirit washes out the weaker, more delicate flavors while reining in the harsher elements — taming the burn, smoothing the edges, and often leaving you with a slightly diminished but more approachable version of what you had neat. The Big Horn, however, does something that genuinely impressed me: ice tones down the alcohol assault but leaves the flavor structure almost entirely intact.
That dark chocolate note? Still there, consistent as sunrise, running the full length of the sip. The cedar shavings actually become more prominent with ice, stepping forward alongside vanilla and a whisper of brown sugar. The raisins and fruit from the nose retreat slightly, which is expected, but what remains is a rich, layered, deeply sippable whiskey with a level of flavor saturation you rarely see from a spirit that’s been chilled down.
Big Horn really impresses here. Where many barrel-proof bourbons merely survive the ice, this one seems to welcome it. The flavors don’t just persist; they rearrange themselves into something arguably more enjoyable than the neat pour. Barrel-proof bourbons that survive ice this well are rarer than you’d think, and the Big Horn does it beautifully.
This is how I’d drink the Big Horn on a quiet evening — rocks, a heavy glass, no rush.
Cocktail (Old Fashioned)
This is an absolutely delicious cocktail. And I don’t throw around that level of praise casually.
The Big Horn in an Old Fashioned is one of those rare cases where the spirit and the cocktail seem purpose-built for each other. That persistent dark chocolate note provides the perfect canvas for the herbal aromatics of the bitters. Instead of competing, they interlock, with the bitters adding a welcome levity and complexity to the bourbon’s naturally rich, heavy profile. The brown sugar and cedar from the spirit play beautifully with the sweetener and citrus of the cocktail build, creating something that tastes like a darker, richer, more serious version of an Old Fashioned than most bourbons could pull off.
This isn’t a bright, fruity Old Fashioned. This is the Old Fashioned you’d order at a dimly lit bar carved into the side of a mountain, where the bartender has opinions about ice and the furniture is made from reclaimed wood. It’s brooding and complex, and if you’re the kind of person who gravitates toward high-proof bourbons specifically for cocktails (as I increasingly am), this bottle earns a permanent spot on the shelf for Old Fashioned duty alone.
Fizz (Mule)
The mule treatment here is good but not the revelation the Old Fashioned was. The ginger beer and lime juice are aggressive dance partners, and while the Big Horn’s dark chocolate richness provides a solid counterbalance to that brightness, the more nuanced cedar and vanilla notes get pushed to the background. What you’re left with is a sweet, well-balanced mule that’s richer and darker than one made with a standard bourbon, but nothing that’ll make you rethink the cocktail.
The Big Horn’s flavor profile is more chocolate-forward and less spice-driven than some bourbons, which means the ginger beer has an easier time shouting it down. It’s a good drink: solid, enjoyable, no complaints. But this bourbon’s best qualities deserve a gentler stage.
Overall Rating
The 291 Big Horn Bourbon is a fascinating bottle that tells you exactly what it is on the first sip: a big, bold, unapologetically high-proof craft bourbon made by people who actually care about what’s inside the glass. It is not a bourbon for neat sipping… unless you enjoy the challenge of taming 132.8 proof with nothing but willpower and patience. This is a pattern I’m seeing consistently with these barrel-strength pours – my experience with the Old Forester Single Barrel Barrel Strength followed the same arc: overwhelming neat, transformative on ice, exceptional in an Old Fashioned. And the Big Horn walks that identical path — which, for a craft distillery going toe-to-toe with one of the oldest bourbon producers in America, is legitimately impressive.
At $130 for a 750ml, the Big Horn is firmly in premium bourbon territory — about $46 more than the Old Forester at $84. But that price premium is buying you genuine craft provenance: grain to barrel to bottle, no sourcing, no shortcuts — plus one of the most unique flavor profiles in American whiskey, courtesy of the Aspen stave finish.
For me, finding this bottle at the foot of Pikes Peak, a few hours after huffing my way up the Shubarth Trail, felt like exactly the right place to discover exactly the right whiskey. The Big Horn earns its keep. The on-ice experience alone justifies the bottle, and that Old Fashioned was one of the best I’ve made in recent memory. This is a whiskey with a strong point of view, made by a distillery with nothing to hide and a still built from photographs.
| Distillery 291 Big Horn Colorado Bourbon Whiskey Produced By: Distillery 291 Production Location: Colorado, United StatesClassification: Bourbon Whiskey Aging: No Age Statement (NAS) Proof: 66.4% ABV Price: $129.99 / 750 ml Overall Rating:   |
Overall Rating: 4/5
High altitude, high proof, high marks — the Big Horn is a Rocky Mountain trophy worth chasing.