High West is a food and drink brand founded in Park City, Utah, in 2006.
High West's saloon sits at the bottom of a Park City ski run called Quittin' Time, and the company calls it the world's first ski-in gastro-distillery. The Park Avenue building went up in 1907 as a livery stable. Turning it into a distillery ran $1 million over plan, the Park Record reported, for more than $4 million total.
David Perkins was a biochemist when a 2001 tour of Maker's Mark showed him how much distilling had in common with his field. "This is biotechnology," he told Food Republic. "It's the same exact thing I did at Amgen." He and his wife Jane founded High West in 2006 with a 250-gallon still. The company bills itself as Utah's first legal distillery since 1870, and its Rendezvous Rye took a double gold in San Francisco in 2008.
Much of the early whiskey was bought from distilleries in Indiana and Kentucky, which drew criticism in 2014. That year Perkins told CompanyWeek he had bought "a bunch of scrap that really nobody wanted." Constellation Brands has owned High West since 2016. The horseshoe in the logo turned up during the stable renovation, the one part of the $4 million job that came free.
In 1933 Utah cast the 36th state vote to end Prohibition, and High West later bottled a 36th Vote Barreled Manhattan.
