Michael Myers

Owner

Distillery 291 is an award winning, small batch whiskey distillery nestled in the stunning foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the distillery sits in the shadow of Pikes Peak where owner and founding distiller, Michael Myers, a former New York City fashion and beauty photographer, with a love of whiskey and passion for the old west, aims to replicate the taste, smell and folklore of that time, to create a one of a kind, bold and beautiful, Colorado Whiskey. Rugged, Refined, Rebellious.

Myers set out to create a flagship whiskey that evoked the Wild West. He grew up on rural family farms in Georgia and Tennessee, across a countryside defined by rolling hills, horses, Jack Daniels and George Dickel. For decades since then, he carried with him an iconic vision of a cowboy walking into a bar, saying give me a whiskey, and the bartender slamming down a bottle — that bottle would be 291 Colorado Whiskey.

Myers built his original still from copper photogravure plates that he had once used to create enduring photographic scenes, from western landscapes to the Chrysler Building. On September 11, 2011 — ten years after 9/11 changed his life and the lives of so many others — Myers pulled his first whiskey off of that still, building his future in whiskey, off his passion for photography.