100% Potato Vodka

It began as an obsession to create the world’s best vodka from the ground up – or in this case, just below it. Each surprisingly complex sip of our premium potato vodka was born of fresh potatoes, mashed fresh and distilled twice to bring you a rare vodka with a character all its own. Cranberry juice is entirely optional.

80 PROOF | 40% ALC/VOL

$34.99

tasting notes

Our 100% Potato Vodka has a soft palate with subtle sweetness followed by a creamy finish, it is a perfect sipping vodka or great as a compliment to your favorite vodka cocktail.

tasting notes

Our 100% Potato Vodka has a soft palate with subtle sweetness followed by a creamy finish, it is a perfect sipping vodka or great as a compliment to your favorite vodka cocktail.

Don’t sweat the technique

Woody Creek Distillers uses 100% Rio Grande potatoes as our base material for all our white spirits. Some are estate grown on our ranch in Woody Creek and the rest comes from our farm partner in Colorado’s San Luis Valley.

We harvest our potatoes in September/October at 3 months old; just long enough to reach full maturity and before they grow the thicker skin typical to potatoes in the russet family.

Freshness is key! Potatoes are washed and riced within days of harvest. Each tank is filled with ~12,000lbs of potatoes and Rocky Mountain water is added to the 6,000L wash line and the 5 hour cook begins. Natural enzymes and cooking is necessary in order to convert starches in the potatoes to sugar, this process is known as saccharification.

Once the cooking is finished, the potato mash is transferred to one of eight 7,500L jacketed fermentation tanks. During fermentation we pitch a distiller’s yeast to process the sugar into alcohol. A longer fermentation (48-60 hours) combined with truly fresh young potatoes, yields a deeper, wider range of flavor.

Oscar is our 36” diameter Beer Stripping Still. He’s able to take a 12,000L batch (two 6,000L fermentation tanks combined) from 8-10% abv to 75% abv in just one run.

FIRST DILUTION – PREPARING FOR FINAL DISTILLATION:

To create a more refined spirit we dilute our now 75% abv distillate down to resulting low wine 35% abv with Reverse Osmosis (RO) water in preparation for the second distillation.

The low wine is then pumped directly into Maisy, our pot/column hybrid still, and the full 42 plate column is utilized, it is through this full column that the low wine is brought up to a robust 96% abv.

SECOND DILUTION – PROOFING:

To bring our 96% abv distillate down to the industry standard 40% abv for bottling we blend with RO water. Before bottling, the vodka is held in a blending tank with other batches to ensure consistency.

The decision to only use fresh potatoes in the pursuit of making a World Class American Vodka, is also the reason why Woody Creek Vodka is not filtered. Our Vodka is designed specifically to have a robust flavor profile, including a viscous texture; neither of which we have any desire to eliminate or reduce.

Cocktails at home

Autumnal Mule

2 oz WOODY CREEK VODKA
.5 oz PEAR NECTAR
.5 oz LEMON NECTAR
2 DASHES STRONGWATER AROMATIC BITTERS
3-4 oz FEVER-TREE GINGER BEER
PEAR SLICE GARNISH

Miesko the Elder

1.5 oz WOODY CREEK VODKA
.5 oz GINGER LIQUEUR
.5 oz LEMON JUICE
3 DASHES STRONGWATER ORANGE BITTERS
4 oz FEVER-TREE ELDERFLOWER TONIC WATER
LEMON PEEL FOR GARNISH

History 101

The state of Colorado once supplied the entire nation with potatoes, with a crop larger than that of Idaho’s. The potatoes were so good that when Teddy Roosevelt came through on a hunting trip and ate them he actually remembered their exceptional taste and texture. Later, when he became president, he demanded that Roaring Fork Valley potatoes be served at his inaugural. So what happened to these potatoes so famous that they eclipsed Idaho’s russets and Long Island’s fingerlings? It wasn’t a blight, like Ireland’s, but an end to Colorado’s silver rush. Once the state’s mines were shuttered the trains to bring ore to Denver stopped running. No trains meant that the crop couldn’t get to market without a huge increase in transportation costs. Suddenly even the best potatoes in America weren’t worth the cost of growing them. Luckily, in the form of vodka, the economics of Woody Creek Distillers will be a little more stable, train or no train.