New name. New location. Same great whiskey.

Dark Iron Distillery logo. Mountains with a mine entrance.

The past year has been hard on everyone. Trying to start a capital intense business has been an extremely steep uphill battle, if not a constant series of uphill battles. Gunnison is a wonderful community in one of the greatest areas of the state but it does bring a unique set of challenges even before a pandemic strikes. Throughout this endeavor, I have said that if I cannot do things right, then I will not do them. Unfortunately, trying to stay in Gunnison County, through no fault of the people who live there, has caused this project to stall.

But where one door closes, another door opens. As I was trying to find storage for my first batch of 27 barrels I was directed to the city of Black Hawk. As it turns out, Black Hawk is currently undergoing a revitalization effort to draw in new tourists, with a key focus on craft beverage production. Where my quest to find usable, available space had stalled in Gunnison, I now had access to a lot of land that the city specifically wants a distillery or brewery on. To be clear, we don’t own any land yet, we still need to find our remaining funding, but Black Hawk has several great real estate options for our business.

To that end, we have rebranded the distillery to reflect the mining history of Black Hawk (and Colorado in general). While iron was not directly part of Black Hawk’s mining operations, people generally associate it as a mined product and it was first discovered in Colorado as hematite, a black iron oxide compound - hence, Dark Iron Distillery.

What does this mean to everyone that donated to our initial crowdfunding campaign? Not much. Everyone who purchased a product voucher will still be able to redeem it for their drink, bottle, etc. The only difference will be where our tasting room is established. Additionally, we have new social media handles, which can be found on this site, or you can find us with @DarkIronWhiskey on Twitter and Instagram - a Facebook page will be launching soon.