When I picked up four bottles from Distillery 291 on that hiking trip through Colorado Springs this spring, this was the one I bought with someone else in mind. My wife has Canadian heritage and a borderline concerning devotion to maple syrup, so when I saw a barrel-proof rye whiskey finished in maple syrup barrels sitting on that liquor store shelf, I knew it was coming home with us whether the rest of the lineup made the cut or not. I’ve had maple-barrel-aged spirits before and I almost always love them (there’s just something about the way maple and oak speak the same language). But I’d never had it with a whiskey this strong: the 291 standard rye had already proven itself a beast at over 130 proof, and I was genuinely curious whether a maple finish could survive – let alone shine – through that kind of firepower.
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 either), 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
This whiskey is a variation of their All Rye product and starts the exact same way: 100% rye malt with no corn, no wheat, no barley to hide behind. The mashbill is a 50/50 split between Colorado malted rye sourced from Root Shoot Malting in Loveland, Colorado, and German rye malt from Weyermann Specialty Malting. That’s a fascinating choice: sourcing half your grain from a fifth-generation Colorado family farm and the other half from one of the most respected specialty maltsters in Bavaria. It’s a mashbill that exists precisely nowhere else in American whiskey.
The All Rye grew out of 291’s earlier experiments with single malt expressions. Michael Myers was apparently so pleased with the results of an all-rye experiment with this grain bill that the decision was made to formalize it as its own product line. And because 291 was built on rye from the beginning, naming it was simple… Myers reportedly just exclaimed the obvious, and a trademark was born.
Like all 291 whiskeys, the mash is soured in open-air fermenters before being triple-distilled through the distillery’s custom copper pot stills — including that original still built from photography plates. The whiskey is aged in virgin, heavily charred American white oak barrels and finished with toasted Aspen wood staves harvested from nearby forests. 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.
There’s no age statement on this whiskey, so we don’t really know how long it sat in a charred oak barrel before bottling. 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.
For the M version of this whiskey, the spirit is then placed in barrels that had previously been used to age Wisconsin maple syrup from Lincoln County Reserve for a little bit more flavoring and maturity. Once that process has finished, the whiskey is then bottled, corked, and caged by hand.
Packaging
The bottle is the same tall, clean, cylindrical clear glass as the rest of the 291 lineup, which means you can see every bit of the rich liquid inside — exactly how it should be. The glass is on the thinner side (nothing premium-feeling in hand), but the proportions are right.
The closure is the familiar 291 calling card: a natural cork held down by a wire cage, the kind you’d see on a bottle of sparkling wine, except it only takes a few turns to free it. It’s rustic, reusable, and reassuring — I was glad to have it when these bottles were flying home in my checked bag.
The label continues the handwritten 291 aesthetic, that dark near-black rectangle taking up the lower two-thirds of the bottle with the name rendered in gold and white paint-pen lettering. The “M” branding is spare and a little mysterious, which fits a whiskey that’s essentially an inside joke about barrels. As with the Big Horn and the All Rye, the label-to-bottle ratio runs a touch heavy for my taste (I’d love to see more of that gorgeous liquid through the glass), but the design is consistent and compelling enough that I’m not going to make a federal case out of it. On the shelf, it looks like an artist’s bottle… because it more or less is.
Neat
The color is the same rich brown with an orange tint around the edges that I noted on the standard rye — the shade of toasted caramel on top of a crème brûlée. The maple barrel doesn’t announce itself visually so much as it does on the nose — and the nose is where the “M” earns its keep.
The alcohol is still very much a presence (I mean, at 123 proof it’s not going to politely step aside) but it reads richer and darker than the standard rye, with a sweetness layered underneath that the base All Rye whiskey simply doesn’t have. The maple syrup comes through beautifully here, weaving together with cinnamon, crisp green apple, and black pepper into something that smells genuinely sweet and inviting. Where the standard rye nose was a crisp New England Christmas morning, this one is more like caramel-covered apples and rich chocolate — a warmer, more indulgent version of the same idea. Sweet, rich, and flat-out delicious.
The first sip, however, still hits like a truck. There’s no getting around the proof. But there is more depth and richness on the palate than the All Rye delivered, and the maple is unmistakably present as one of the players — it’s just that it gets somewhat overshadowed by the bitter dark chocolate, coffee, and black pepper that form this whiskey’s earthy core. Think of the “M” as a slightly less jarring, slightly richer cousin of the All Rye. The maple sands down a few of the sharper edges and adds a layer of sweetness, but it doesn’t fundamentally rewrite the whiskey — the alcohol is still firmly in charge.
As with the All Rye, this is not a pour I’d recommend neat for most people, even seasoned high-proof drinkers. The flavors are interesting and the maple sweetness genuinely improves the experience over the standard rye, but the alcohol still dominates enough that you’re only getting a fraction of what’s in the glass.
On Ice
The general rule applies here just as it did with the standard rye: a few cubes wash out the harsher elements and let the actual flavors come forward. With ice, this opens up into that same rich, earthy profile: dark chocolate and coffee leading, the malted-grain depth reinforcing those roasted notes, crisp apple providing some brightness and levity, and black pepper texture surfacing in the finish.
Here’s my one honest disappointment, though: the maple syrup, which was so lovely on the neat nose, largely fades into the background once the ice goes in. It doesn’t vanish entirely — there’s a little extra depth and richness underpinning everything that the standard rye doesn’t have — but if you were hoping for a clear maple statement on the rocks, you’ll have to listen carefully for it. What the maple gives you on ice is subtlety, not headline billing. I appreciate the added dimension; I just wish there were more of it.
Cocktail (Old Fashioned)
In an Old Fashioned, the “M” follows the same arc as the standard rye: ice and a touch of sweetener (simple syrup works, demerara is better) turning a combative neat pour into something genuinely drinkable and complex. The bitters do their usual fine work balancing the rich dark chocolate and coffee, pulling the black pepper spice forward and tying everything together. It’s a strong, brooding Old Fashioned with real depth.
But there’s a detail worth noting here that I don’t think I called out clearly elsewhere: the cedar note from the Aspen staves is noticeably accentuated in this build, and it adds a really interesting aromatic layer that lifts the whole drink. This is better than the All Rye Old Fashioned — though, in the interest of honesty, I suspect a little extra demerara syrup could replicate most of the improvement we see here. I think what’s happening comes down to the proof. At this strength, the alcohol doesn’t just mask the more delicate flavors; the reduced water content actually leaves less room to carry those flavors forward, since water is what does a lot of the flavor-delivery work in a spirit. The maple’s contribution is real but quiet, and the cocktail’s sweetener is doing some of the same job.
Fizz (Mule)
Again, this version of the Kentucky mule mirrors the All Rye Kentucky Mule: that malted, earthy richness standing up to the aggressive brightness of the ginger beer and turning a normally bright, acidic cocktail into something you could imagine ordering in a dark cocktail lounge.
But the difference here is a welcome bump in sweetness and richness courtesy of the maple finish. It’s not the clear star of the show, but it’s absolutely making a difference, rounding the drink out into something more balanced, richer, and frankly more delicious than the standard rye version. Of the mixed formats we test (Old Fashioned and mule), the mule might be where the maple’s subtle contribution pays off most naturally.
Overall Rating
Here’s the bottom line: if you’re only going to bring home one rye from Distillery 291, make it this one. The maple syrup finish isn’t an earth-shattering transformation — at 123 proof, the alcohol and that dark-chocolate-and-coffee core still run the show, and the maple often plays a supporting rather than a starring role. But it does add genuine depth, sweetness, and complexity across every format, and that little bit of extra richness is enough to make all the difference. It also makes for a great conversation piece; a whiskey-maple-whiskey barrel is exactly the kind of story that gets passed around the table when you pour it for guests.
At a premium price point in line with the rest of 291’s barrel-proof lineup, the “M” asks for the same investment as the standard rye while delivering a more rewarding, more well-rounded experience. It’s still very much a cocktail-and-ice whiskey rather than a neat sipper (the proof makes sure of that), but in those contexts it consistently edges out its non-maple sibling.
This lands as a half-step above the standard All Rye and right alongside it at 4.5/5, with the maple finish providing just enough added complexity to justify being the rye I’d reach for first. Our colleague Dan was equally impressed with the Bad Guy expression, and with the Big Horn, All Rye, and now the “M” all earning high marks, Distillery 291 is running an impressive streak on our scorecard. Each one is different, each one is unmistakably Colorado, and each one is worth your time.
| Distillery 291 M Colorado Whiskey Produced By: Distillery 291 Production Location: Colorado, United StatesClassification: Rye Whiskey Aging: No Age Statement (NAS) Proof: 61.5% ABV Price: $129.99 / 750 ml Overall Rating:   |
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
The maple never steals the show, yet somehow it’s the reason this is the bottle to grab.