These days, Old Elk is building a full-scale distillery in Fort Collins but in the meantime still leaning on whiskeys sourced from MGP that were made when Metze was still there. Richardson loved the results, and figured he should just hire away the MGP master distiller to keep it going. Metze ultimately created custom bourbon, wheated bourbon and straight wheat mashbills for Old Elk. “That,” says Metze, “was the first time in my career I had the opportunity to build mashbills from the ground up.” He didn’t have a production facility of his own yet, but didn’t want the standard MGP mashbills, either. The founder and longtime CEO of Otter Products, maker of OtterBox phone covers, Richardson in 2013 wanted to start a new distillery in his hometown of Fort Collins. Once the juice left his hands, he largely lost track with what brands all over the country were doing with it. Regardless, Metze was making the same five mashbills he knew well, going back decades. Others were happy to take MGP-aged whiskies and just slap their own labels on it. Working there turned out to be the best training in the world, as for becoming a master distiller.”Īt MGP, some brands would buy un-aged, raw whiskey and finish it or blend it themselves. “Seagram’s was progressive, and pioneered a lot of the techniques widely in use today. “I was producing many products for many brands, but those products were all based on five Seagram’s mashbills,” he says. But it was the Seagram’s approach – and mashbills – that Metze learned from the beginning that continued to define how he approached the work. By that point the master distiller at MGP, Metze found himself overseeing whiskey-making at the largest contract distiller in the United States. The Seagram’s liquor business eventually went to Pernod Ricard, which went to LDI, which went to Diageo, which eventually went to MGP.

“That was pretty darn cool.”įorty-two years later, says the now master distiller at Old Elk Distillery in Fort Collins, Colo., “it’s still pretty darn cool.” “The only thing I really knew is that I was 23 years old, and I was going to work for a whiskey company,” Metze says.

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