A livery stable, a pot still and Utah’s first legal distillery since Prohibition.

High West was founded in Park City, Utah, by David Perkins and his wife, Jane. VinePair, in a January 2024 profile, describes David Perkins as a biochemist who moved with Jane from California, and says the idea for a distillery began on a 2001 tour of Maker’s Mark in Kentucky, where he saw how much distilling had in common with the chemistry he already knew. Accounts of the founding year differ: VinePair gives 2006, while English Wikipedia gives 2007.

Both agree on the headline fact. High West was the first legally licensed distillery in Utah since the end of Prohibition, a point English Wikipedia sources to the New York Post in 2010 and VinePair repeats.

The home the Perkinses chose became part of the brand. English Wikipedia says the distillery, a saloon and a restaurant were set up in an old livery stable known as “The National Garage” and in the neighbouring Ellsworth J. Beggs house, a two-storey house built in 1907 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. VinePair says the stable building was restored in 2008 and that the original distillery is now the High West Saloon. Perkins wanted visitors “to sit and have a glass of whiskey and reflect on their ski visit to the region,” VinePair quotes him as saying.

The equipment in Park City was small. English Wikipedia, citing National Geographic Traveler in 2010, describes a 250-gallon copper pot still, a combination still that could be run as a pot still or as a reflux still. Production later moved out of town: a distillery and visitor centre on Blue Sky Ranch, a working cattle ranch in Wanship, opened to the public in September 2015, according to Ski Utah’s announcements at the time, and VinePair says most of High West’s distilling now takes place there.

Blending, sourcing and a rye called Rendezvous.

High West made its name as a blender as much as a distiller. English Wikipedia says Rendezvous Rye was the company’s first commercial whiskey and that it was not originally distilled in Utah: it was a blend of rye whiskeys bought from MGP in Indiana and from Barton in Kentucky, put together in Park City. In July 2014 The Daily Beast reported that many whiskeys sold as craft products across the United States, High West’s among them, were made from spirit bought from MGP’s distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. High West does distil and age its own whiskey and has blended it into its products over time, English Wikipedia says, and VinePair wrote in 2024 that Double Rye! and Rendezvous Rye still use whiskey sourced from MGP.

The range grew from there. The names most often listed, in the Salt Lake Tribune in 2016 and VinePair in 2024, are Rendezvous Rye, Double Rye!, American Prairie Bourbon and Campfire, alongside seasonal and limited releases such as Bourye and A Midwinter Night’s Dram, and a High Country American Single Malt. Some releases have come and gone: English Wikipedia says Yippee Ki-Yay, a rye finished in barrels that had held vermouth and Syrah, was launched in 2015 and discontinued in July 2020.

Outside designers and artists have worked on the labels. The Portland agency Sandstrom Partners says on its website that it redesigned the labels for High West’s bourbon and Double Rye!, with illustration art direction and custom typography, for Constellation Brands. In May 2021 Fred Minnick reported a limited edition of Rendezvous Rye with a label by the Western landscape painter Ed Mell, which the company’s release described as “New West Meets Old West”; the same release said the flagship rye was moving to a seasonal release.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all craft whiskey, gin and tequila names: Tequila Ocho, Fortaleza, High West, Westland, Balcones, St. George Spirits and Empress 1908. Craft spirits brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from small distilleries that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a local bottle shop to a bar list far from home.

A craft spirits brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its spirit is actually distilled and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its spirit is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From a Park City saloon to a New York drinks group.

On 5 October 2016 Constellation Brands, the drinks company based in Victor, New York, announced an agreement to buy High West. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the deal covered the company’s operations in Salt Lake City, Park City and Wanship and its whiskey portfolio, and was expected to close by the end of that month. John Esposito, then High West’s chief executive, told the paper that the Utah operations would continue unchanged, from the whiskeys to the saloon. David Perkins was to stay on as a brand ambassador and keep working on new products with the head distiller, Brendan Coyle, who VinePair says trained in brewing and distilling at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

A decade on, the brand is still with the same owner: Constellation Brands lists High West Whiskey among its brands on its website in 2026. The Park City saloon and the Wanship distillery both remain visitor destinations, and the company’s site is highwest.com.

For a design guide, High West shows how a whiskey company can turn a place, a building and a period of history into a brand, letting a Park City saloon and a ranch distillery carry the story while its best-known ryes have been blended from more than one source. Compare WhistlePig, the Vermont rye brand, and Westland, the Seattle single malt distillery. For this guide we use saloon brown, prairie gold and Wasatch slate with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep High West’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.