William H. Macy describes his first visit to the mountains near Aspen as “pretty much love at first sight.” It was sometime in the mid-1980s, Macy recalls, and he was traveling with then-girlfriend Felicity Huffman back to the area where she grew up.
“Her mom was a magnificent cook, and they ride horses,” Macy said. “From a middle-class boy, I thought it was beyond the beyond.”
These days, the actor is embedded in the local beverage community. He and Huffman own a home and some land in Woody Creek where they grow potatoes that eventually become vodka and gin at the nearby Woody Creek Distillers. Macy is also a fixture of the scene there, having come on as the distillery’s official “spokesdude” in 2018.
Aside from the occasional ukulele performance, his role primarily entails being the face of the brand, offering interviews and, in a less official capacity, taste-tasting. Macy is hard at work fulfilling those duties on a recent bluebird winter day in December with the assistance of his jubilant Bernedoodle, Gus.
Milling about the Woody Creek taproom, the actor famous for his decade-long stint as Frank Gallagher in “Shameless” and numerous other works, seems less like a celebrity and more like a regular. Bartenders endearingly call him “boo” and “Bill” — which he prefers, by the way — and ask if he wants a top-off.
Today, Macy is sipping a Glencairn glass of a new spirit: The William H. Macy Reserve Straight Rye Whiskey, which debuted on Dec. 1. The expression, which has been aged 10 years, is both a toast to its namesake and a showcase of Woody Creek’s roots.
Founded in 2012 by locals Mark Kleckner and Pat and Mary Scanlan, Woody Creek Distillers makes liquor using exclusively Colorado ingredients. It started with vodka leveraging locally grown potatoes, a hallmark of agriculture in the Roaring Fork Valley, which gives its spirits an earthy flavor, silky mouthfeel and extra viscosity.
“We used to call it like a martini in a bottle,” Kleckner said. “People ask me what’s the best thing to mix it with and I tell them ice.”
(Macy enjoys it with a squeeze of lemon.)
Impressively, Woody Creek grows its own potatoes on the owners’ and Macy’s land. The company plants in June and harvests in September, hauling in about 1 million pounds annually to make its house vodka. That spirit also serves as the base for its standard gin and its Mary’s Select gin, which is a showstopping purple color thanks to the addition of butterfly pea flowers. (Fun fact: If you add citrus, the gin’s hue skews pink.)
From the early days of distilling, Kleckner and his partners wanted to produce whiskey. So they experimented with various mash bills featuring local grains like barley, rye, wheat, and corn, and laid them to age in oak barrels.
Macy, Kleckner and a panel of spirits professionals sampled barrels from eight distinct mash bills from that early era to find one for a special release. The one that resonated with Macy features 80% rye and 20% malted barley, and was first distilled in spring 2013.
“Without question, this one stood out to me… the easy-drinking of it,” Macy said. “What I like about rye is the mouthfeel of it and the secondary taste you get, as opposed to bourbon.”
Indeed, the spirit drinks incredibly smooth considering it’s 100-proof (50% alcohol), with little sting or alcoholic bite. Aromas of baking spices give way to a rich and slightly sweet flavor that spotlights the barrels’ role in crafting this 10-year-old whiskey.
Kleckner attributes the complexity to the malted barley, which adds a nuttiness to balance the pepper and orange peel notes of the rye.
Woody Creek touts the William H. Macy Reserve as bottled-in-bond, an old-school term that harkens back to the late 1800s when it was used as a seal of legitimacy from the federal government. Back then, it assured people that liquor was made at a certified or “bonded” facility and not cut with any other potentially dangerous liquid.
Nowadays, it’s more of a signal for aficionados that the spirit was distilled by its maker during a specific year, versus blended using a variety of spirits of different ages and origins. The designation also requires a liquor to be bottled at 100 proof.
Macy’s collaboration with Woody Creek marks his foray into the alcohol industry, and as he, Gus and distiller Blaine Hudson give me a tour of the distillery, it’s clear as white dog that the actor knows his stuff.
“If you think about it, the distilling process is the same,” Macy muses. “What changes is where you get the ingredients. It’s the water, it’s the grains, where they come from, the soils they came from, altitude, humidity — that’s what changes the taste of the whiskey.”
The barrels used to age whiskeys are all made from white oak, Macy notes. The room where they’re stored is temperature-controlled with added humidity to keep down the amount of angel’s share that evaporates in Colorado’s arid climate, he adds.
“You know about the whiskey thief?” Macy asked. “It’s like a huge pipette that you dip it down in there (the barrel bunghole). One has a floating shot glass, you dip it down to taste it. A whiskey thief, I love that stuff.”
When asked which of his characters would most enjoy the new whiskey, Macy doesn’t hesitate.
“Frank Gallagher. He would think he died and went to heaven,” he said.
William H. Macy Reserve Straight Rye Whiskey, which retails for $199, is available for a limited time at Woody Creek Distillers (60 Sunset Drive, Basalt) or online at drinkfellows.com.
UPDATED on Dec. 27 at 1:50 p.m.: A previous version of this story erroneously dated the term bottled-in-bond to Prohibition. The Bottled-In-Bond Act was passed in 1897.
