Standing in the beauty of the Red Rocks Amphitheatre, just outside of Denver, I couldn’t think of a better place to discuss whiskey and music with Stranahan’s Master Distiller Rob Dietrich. A Colorado native, I spoke to Rob about creating cask-strength whiskey, his rock n’ roll roots and Stranahan’s Cask Thief, which gave “Stranafans” the opportunity to sample some of Dietrich’s more experimental projects.
The Whiskey Lifestyle: Tell us a little bit about Cask Thief. What was the inspiration for it?
Rob Dietrich: Cask Thief is where I’ve hand selected six different barrels that we will offer up to the public. They will come in to the distillery. With a whiskey thief, we’ll pull it right out of the barrel and put it right into the glass at cask strength. These are very unique barrels. I’ve gone through the barrelhouse and selected these by taste. The inspiration came from the way I build Snowflake, which is my specialty cask-finish release that I do once a year at the distillery in December. And what I do is, I will cask finish whiskey in different wine barrels and then marry those different flavor profiles together by nose and taste to create a unique profile every year. This will be an example of how I do that. You get to try this barrel over here and this barrel over here. And if you can imagine those flavors, you know, nosing and tasting, that you might be creating your own in-house marriage of those barrels. 
I wanted to give people insight on how my process is for making Snowflake and just give them a little taste of some cask-strength stuff.
TWL: Cask Thief in its third year and you guys are sold out. What does that feel like?
RD: The first year was when we just had the idea and we’ll see what happens, around 350 people showed up. So it was a success. We said, “Well, alright, let’s up the game a little bit.” We kept the same base — six barrels just because it is cask-strength whiskey, we don’t want people drinking too much. That’s why we have a passport [seen below]. When you get your dream from that barrel we have to stamp your passport, that way we’re regulating how much people are drinking. It is high altitude, it’s hot and we want people to be safe, but we also want to enjoy themselves. This year it’s going to be around 700 people.
TWL: You’ve mentioned Snowflake a few times. Yesterday, you told the great story at distillery about how the Snowflake phenomenon has evolved.
RD: Yeah, it’s been pretty extraordinary. When we first started out, we were just trying some experimental things. We were taking our whiskey that had been already aged in white American oak barrels for no less than two years, maybe three years, and then we’ll transfer it into a used wine barrels. It could be a Cab[ernet] Franc, Port or Muscat barrel. And so, those create different finishes. So the first three Snowflakes were released at the same time. They were a Cab Franc barrel, a Hungarian white oak barrel and a Port barrel. Those were just cask finishes — around 260 bottles [from] each barrel. And, it just kind of slowly started catching on as we were doing different cask finishes. People would start showing up, we’d have a busier day in the gift shop.
And then, it really shifted and changed is when I started taking the different cask finishes we had and started marrying them together. I said, “Let’s take a Tempranillo, a Cab Franc and an Malbec, I’ll make a batch out of that. So the first ones, were really only like 350 – 500 bottles. Then we start getting busier and busier, people started lining up in front of the gift store sooner and sooner. And then it turned into a full blown phenomenon where the first guy was getting in line and camping out the night before. He just set up his tent on the sidewalk and camped out. More people and more started following him and it just turned into this thing.
So, in order to ensure that you were going to get your hands on two bottles of Snowflake, we only sell it at the distillery one day out of the year — the first Saturday of December. The first people started getting in line and staying overnight on Friday, then it turned into Thursday. Last year, the first guys got in line on Wednesday at 5:30 in the morning. They drove in from Wisconsin and set up a tent on the sidewalk… in late November! By the time we opened the doors on Saturday morning, there were 1,000 people out there. They were camped out for two blocks. We measured the line and it was a half-mile alone.
TWL: You equated those lines to people waiting in line for concert tickets. You have a background in music. How did you get into the music business and how do you think that experience helps you today?
RD: I got out of the army and I was living out of a ’67 Chevy school bus half size. I had a bunch of combat pay saved up, so I built the thing myself. I drove from upstate New York out to Oregon. And then, I was just on a road trip down to San Francisco and happened to run into a guy who was running Bill Graham Presents at the time. They were putting on the [1996] Tibetan Freedom Concert at Golden Gate Park and they needed extra hands. And when I was in the army, I was in the Tenth Mountain Division, so I had climbing background, and my climbing gear with me. He said, “Well, we need riggers…” I said, “So you’re going to pay me to climb? Hell yeah, I’m in.” So, I did a lot of rigging at that concert and I was hooked. I got to see everybody from B.B. King and The Beastie Boys to Bjork and Sonic Youth. There were so many great bands there that it was just epic. I stuck with Bill Graham Presents for a while in San Francisco and then ended up back in Colorado. I worked in Denver and on the road for 10 years with acts like James Brown and Lone Star. I finally decided it was time to settle down and not long after that I started at Stranahan’s. Through the music industry, I learned how to manage crews large-scale productions, which has helped immensely in my career in whiskey.
[Editor’s Note: This interview was cut short when my recorder decided it was too hot in the Colorado sun.]
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