Waterpocket Distillery is a food and drink brand founded in West Valley City, Utah, in 2017.
The two pot stills at Waterpocket Distillery in West Valley City are nicknamed Witch and Warlock. Witch holds 500 liters and mostly runs rum. Warlock holds 230 and gets the botanical liqueurs, which is where this place does its strangest work. In 2017 SLUG Magazine called Notom, the house amaro, the first amaro distilled in Utah.
Julia and Alan Scott opened the distillery that year as the state's 13th licensed distilled spirits plant. Julia has spent two decades as a chemical engineer in distillation. Alan has been fermenting things since college. They named the place for the Waterpocket Fold in Capitol Reef, where they kept returning while they were dating. "It became what was essentially Utah for us," Alan told SLUG.
The Long Lost line revives liqueurs that fell out of production, starting with Oread, built on an old formula from Danzig. The house philosophy, Alan says, is "to pull the sugar back as much as possible." He makes liqueurs.
Utah's Own lists the Robbers Roost whiskey as outsourced, so not every bottle starts in Witch or Warlock. The liqueurs do, in a business park SLUG warned you would miss if you blinked.
The rum in Waterpocket's Coffee & Rum liqueur spent four months in whiskey barrels before the coffee went in, a blend of two Ethiopian beans and one from Rwanda.
