5280 Magazine: The 26 Best Bars in Denver Right Now

By Patricia Kaowthumrong, Riane Menardi Morrison, Staff5280 February 2022

Most Changed

Deviation Distilling – LoDo

For Deviation Distilling’s fifth birthday, the booze-maker received a head-turning face-lift, moving its tasting room from a bare-bones production facility in Baker to a swanky, 1,791-square-foot location in downtown’s bustling Dairy Block in August 2021. There, you can tipple seasonally rotating drinks made with Deviation’s gins and whiskeys in a two-story, glass-bedecked taproom or on plush couches beside fire pits out front. Let Deviation’s talented team take your palate on a journey with a guided tasting of its signature, botanically bright gins and coffee-flavored whiskeys, or try them in concoctions mixed with homemade syrups and tonics. (We’re partial to the silky-smooth chai old fashioned, made with the distillery’s cinnamon- and vanilla-rich Aztec Whiskey, and the best-selling cucumber basil cocktail, a refresher featuring the rosemary- and sage-perfumed Mountain Herb gin.) Juniper-spirit skeptics, beware: Deviation has a reputation for converting gin haters to lovers in just one visit. —Madi Skahill