Todd Leopold

“Reinventing Colorado Whiskey”

Long before he became one of the most respected names in American whiskey, Todd Leopold was a student of fermentation and old-world technique. Born and raised in Colorado, he began his formal education in brewing, graduating from the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago, one of the oldest brewing schools in the United States. He then continued his studies in Munich, Germany, immersing himself in traditional European production methods. While his earliest professional work was in brewing, this foundation in grain science, yeast behavior, and fermentation would eventually lead him into distilling.

In 1999, Todd and his brother Scott Leopold co-founded Leopold Bros. in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Although the company initially operated as both a brewery and a distillery, Todd’s passion quickly shifted toward the latter. In the early 2000s, when American craft whiskey was still in its infancy, Todd Leopold began distilling spirits using methods long abandoned by larger producers.

In 2012, Todd made another life-altering decision and married his wife, Sarah, a Michigan native whom he had met in Ann Arbor. But after several years of middling operations in Michigan, the brothers and their young families moved their company back to their home state of Colorado, reopening in Denver in 2008 as a full-scale distillery.

While many new craft distillers leaned heavily on modern equipment, the Leopold Brothers took a different route. Todd sought out historical production techniques, sourcing handmade copper pot stills from Germany and, most notably, commissioning a three-chamber still—a piece of distilling technology that had not been commercially manufactured since the 1920s. Traditionally used for heavy-bodied rye whiskey, three-chamber stills were once popular among pre-Prohibition distillers but had been abandoned because they were slower and more labor-intensive than column stills. Leopold had read about them in historical production manuals and was determined to revive the method.

In 2020, after years of research and development, Todd and Scott released Leopold Bros. Three Chamber Rye Whiskey, produced on their newly built still. The whiskey drew significant attention across the industry, with distillers and historians alike praising its bold, viscous character and unique mouthfeel. Unlike modern rye whiskey, which tends to be lean and spice-forward, the three-chamber method extracted richer oils and aromatics from the grain. Critics hailed it as one of the most historically accurate recreations of pre-Prohibition rye available.