There are whiskey makers, and then there are whiskey makers who change the culture of an entire state. Jake Norris is the latter. The Denver distiller who helped put Colorado on the American whiskey map is stepping out on his own for the first time, and he's bringing with him a bourbon that's been quietly aging since before the world went sideways.
A Career Built on Firsts
Norris earned his reputation the hard way. He was head distiller at Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey when it opened in 2004 — the first distillery to operate in the state since Prohibition ended. That alone would be enough to cement a legacy, but Norris wasn't done. A decade later, he moved over to Laws Whiskey House, where he served as head distiller for another highly regarded Colorado operation.
He left Laws in 2016 and spent the years that followed doing what few distillers get the chance to do: work across the entire country — and beyond. "I've picked a few clients and gone deep," Norris says, "getting started before they've even built a distillery and taking them from ground level up through launch." His consulting work took him from New York to California and even to Japan, helping smaller craft operations find their footing.
That kind of breadth gives a distiller a perspective that's hard to manufacture. Norris has seen operations at every scale, in every corner of the market. Now, after years of building other people's dreams, he's building his own.
The Batch That Refused to Be Rushed
The story of what Norris is releasing now starts in February 2018. Through his consulting travels, he had connected with Pete Barger, co-founder of Southern Distilling Company in Statesville, North Carolina. The two men shared a vision: produce a high-rye bourbon based on Norris' own recipe and bottle it for release in 2020.
Barger distilled the batch and filled 30 new American white oak barrels. The plan was straightforward. The timeline was not.
When 2020 arrived, it brought a pandemic with it. The bottling plans were shelved. The barrels kept aging. And as the months turned into years, the liquid inside those barrels became something neither man had originally planned for — something too good, too personal, to simply sell off. "Auction off to a stranger," as Norris puts it, was never going to happen.
So Norris sat on the barrels and got to work on something bigger.
Eight Releases, One Project
That aging bourbon is now the foundation of the Curated Barrel Project, a series of eight small-batch releases that Norris is bringing to market over the next two years. The first edition, called the Control, is a seven-year-old straight bourbon — the clock starting from when the batch was completed in 2018. It's priced at $99 a bottle and available through the brand's website, where buyers can sign up and will be notified when the release is ready.
The Control serves as the baseline — the whiskey as it was, finished in the original American white oak, before any additional cask work. Each of the seven editions to follow will be finished in a different style of barrel and released on a quarterly schedule. Already confirmed are a cognac-cask version (using French white oak Remy Martin XO barrels specifically) and a port-cask expression. The remaining five styles have yet to be announced.
Buyers who want to commit to the full run can sign up for the entire series, which comes with a bonus bottle not sold individually through any other channel.
Not Built for the Shelf
The American whiskey market has developed a complicated relationship with prestige releases. Limited bottlings from well-known names routinely sell out in minutes, flip for multiples of retail on the secondary market, and end up sitting in climate-controlled rooms never to be opened. Norris has watched all of this and has a clear opinion about it.
"I like to make whiskey, but I'm not a big fan of snobbery and the hoarding and collecting that goes with it," he says. "I wanted to make a collector-grade whiskey and sell it to people who would drink it. Don't wait for a special occasion, make the occasion special. Write the memory on the bottle — but the whiskey is ephemeral, and it needs to be experienced."
The $99 price point reflects that philosophy. This is serious whiskey — years in the making, from a distiller with one of the strongest resumes in the business — but it's priced to be opened, not archived.
Those who remember Norris' days at Stranahan's will recall the Snowflake releases, where devoted fans would camp out for days to get their hands on special limited editions. The Curated Barrel Project draws on that same tradition of meaning-packed, carefully made limited whiskey, but without the marathon wait in a parking lot.
More Than Just Whiskey in the Box
What arrives with a bottle of Curated Barrel Project is more than just the liquid. Each of the eight editions includes a hand-numbered zine — a printed, personal artifact that won't be available anywhere else. "I grew up as a skateboarding punk kid," Norris says, "so they'll be kind of autobiographical. That's you meeting me."
It's an unusual touch for a whiskey release, but it fits the ethos. Norris isn't trying to build a brand that feels corporate or distant. He's letting people into his world.
Each bottle also includes a QR code that unlocks a custom Spotify playlist — Norris' personal soundtrack for that particular release. It's a nod to something he used to do at Stranahan's, where the song playing during the bottling was handwritten directly on the label. That kind of detail is the difference between a product and an experience.
Buyers also get placed on an invitation list for a series of dinners pairing each release with food prepared by local chefs. The whole thing is designed as a relationship between maker and drinker, not a transaction.
Arvada Is Next
The Curated Barrel Project isn't just a whiskey release — it's the opening act of something larger. While Norris has been preparing these eight batches for market, he's also been building a distillery of his own in Arvada, Colorado. It will be his first as an owner rather than a hired gun, and production is expected to begin there this summer.
The facility doesn't have a public name yet, but the timeline is deliberate. The Curated Barrel Project will take roughly two years to complete from the first release through the eighth. By the time the final bottle from that series lands on doorsteps, the new Arvada distillery's first original batch should be just about ready.
It's the kind of long game that only someone with patience — and confidence — plays. Norris has spent the better part of two decades helping other distillers build something worth having. Now he's doing it for himself, with a seven-year-old bourbon in hand and a Colorado distillery on the way.
For anyone who's followed his career through Stranahan's and Laws and wondered what comes next, the answer is finally here. And it tastes like it was worth the wait.
