Inside Alpine Distilling’s 10,000-square-foot warehouse, whiskey-making is an intricate test of patience. Each stage, from grain to barrel, reflects co-founders, distillers and husband-and-wife duo Rob and Sara Sergent’s commitment to traditional methods and precise control, all fine-tuned for the unique conditions of Summit County.
That small facility is where all their magic is made. While Sara plays with light spirits — gin, vodka and liqueurs — Rob, with a family heritage rooted in Kentucky, crafts whiskeys.
What does it take to make an Alpine Distilling whiskey? Well, quite a lot of intention, science and money.
“We made the conscious decision for our brown spirit side that we were going to buy the best, use distilling techniques that are proven, very traditional, very classic, and then really make sure that we were fluent in the unique dynamics of being in Summit County,” Rob said. “The water is different. The atmospheric pressure is different. Our seasons are very, very different than my home state of Kentucky.”
All those factors are what set them apart, Rob said.
The process in a nutshell
At its most basic level, Rob said, whiskey begins as a spirit distilled from cereal grains.
“Corn, wheat, rye, quinoa, oatmeal, barley — anything that’s a cereal that then gets turned into alcohol by the process of mashing, fermenting and then distilling, is a whiskey,” he said.
The type of grain used determines what kind of whiskey it becomes. For example, a bourbon, only made in America, must be at least 51% corn.
The process starts with mashing — turning grains into a sugary liquid called wort.
“Essentially, you’re making a beer, and in that process, we’re trying to convert carbohydrates into fermentable sugars,” Rob said.
Temperature control is crucial, and Rob explained that each grain is cooked at different temperatures and water ratios, predetermined by his own experimentation and traditional methods.
Once the wort is ready, a tube heat exchanger is used to gently bring it down to 85 degrees. At the right temperature, it’s transferred to a stainless steel, open-top fermenter where the yeast is pitched to convert sugar to alcohol.
“If you remember from high school science class, yeast eats sugar, they poop gas and they pee alcohol, that’s what yeast does,” Rob said with a laugh. “We open top ferment. We leave everything open to the environment.”
Fermentation at Alpine typically takes about a week. It varies depending on the types of grains and the weather because cold, heat and even storm cycles will impact the process. When fermentation is complete, the mixture undergoes flocculation. That’s when yeast and grain solids sink, naturally filtering the liquid before distillation.
Fractal distillation — separating the liquid mixture into its components by heating, vaporizing, then cooling — is the next step where the craft meets the science. Rob said Alpine uses a custom pot still handmade in Daphne, Alabama, by a nuclear engineer exclusively for whiskey distillation. He explained pure alcohol, ethanol, boils at 174 degrees Fahrenheit, and it’s the distiller’s job to separate alcohol from unwanted elements “to set up an environment where the alcohol boils but the waters don’t.”
That process requires the distiller to identify and throw out the undesirable heads and tails. Heads, Rob said, are the first distilled chemicals that one wouldn’t want in their bodies, like acetone. Tails, or fusel oils, are a byproduct at the end of the distillation process that, if in the finished whiskey, can cause headaches because they have a harder time crossing the blood-brain barrier.
Controlling proof is another critical part of the process because that determines how a whiskey can be classified. Legally, a bourbon has to come off the still under 160 proof, Rob said.
Ultimately, Rob said his approach to distillation is gentle:
“I don’t want to poke flavor. I want to just invite it to lead.”
The importance of the barrel
The grains, temperatures, waters, fermentation and distilling are all elements that affect the final flavor of the whiskey, but the barrel is the huge piece of that puzzle, Rob said.
Alpine uses a mix of Appalachian oak from Ohio and oak from Arkansas that’s sourced through California, crafted through partnerships with barrel makers and has the same attention to detail that goes into everything else.
“Arkansas oak is fruitier, tends to have a different profile, where traditional Appalachian oak has those nice cooking spices, cloves, all of those things that you get if you think of traditional Kentucky whiskey,” Rob said. “So our Utah Straight, and then subsequently the Triple Oak, is a blend of those two profiles.”
Both are types of white oak, the wood of choice for its natural waterproof properties. The barrels are first toasted and then charred to simultaneously remove the wood’s stored sugars and flavors that are unwanted. But the process also draws out desirable flavors.
“You pick a char level, and what that’s doing is extracting that hemicellulose, or cellulose sugars, so flavors like butterscotch, caramel, all the sort of traditional whiskey flavors, 90% of that comes from the barrel,” Rob explained.
Working on a small scale — managing around 500 barrels — gives the team the ability to hand-select, specially formulate and monitor each one.
The distilled whiskey is packed into these barrels, then laid to rest for around four years.
When it comes time to harvest the barrels, it’s a small, hands-on operation. Being small means that if the whiskey still isn’t ready, Alpine can put it back in the barrel for another heat cycle.
Shelbey Hunter and Aidan Rogowski are two Alpine Distilling employees who help manage the day-to-day operations, which can include opening barrels. In late July, the pair cracked open four barrels labeled “August 2021″ with Rob.
The barrel was rolled and balanced onto the prongs of a forklift, and the stopper popped out with a slap hammer. Hunter and Rogowski held either end of the barrel, carefully positioned at the edge of a stainless steel container, then quickly flipped it so the bunghole faced down into the bin with a spray of whiskey.
Rob caught some on his fingers, tasting for signs that the whiskey is ready and getting an idea of the flavors. As it poured out through a filter to catch bits of charred wood, a machine was used to measure the alcohol by volume, then the liquid was drained into a tank to be weighed and then cut with an alkaline water. They repeated the process for each of the four barrels. While each underwent the same process, there’s still a large flavor range: some sweeter and more caramelly, others with heavier cooking spices.
That magic of the barrel is featured in the Alpine Triple Oak whiskey. Released in 2024, the Triple Oak became the highest-ranked American whiskey of all time according to the “Enthusiast Report” — a product made unique by its one-of-a-kind barrel.
For Triple Oak, Rob spared no expense, which was the whole experiment behind the whiskey.
“Someone said, ‘What if at every single stage you could spend the most amount you could possibly spend?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a pretty fascinating journey.’ And it turns out we were already doing it,” Rob said.
So Alpine took its totally done Utah Straight and finished it in a barrel made with three different types of oak: a charred American oak, a toasted American oak and a toasted French oak.
“It is the absolute Rolls-Royce of barrels,” he said. “French heads, American staves that are treated to some particular conditioning.”
Proprietary, of course.
The result? A bespoke product
Today, Rob said about 80% of Alpine’s whiskey work focuses on its wheated bourbon. Its Utah Straight is made primarily with corn, wheat and barley.
“We found that our equipment, in our location, with our desired profile in market, what we want to actually deliver — that’s what we do best,” Rob said. “And I think actually we do it as good as anybody in the world.”
The distillery also has the Triple Oak and its American. And that’s it for whiskeys. Compared to competitors that more frequently release new products, Rob said the nature of Alpine’s process means more modest outputs.
It’s primarily because Alpine distills its whiskeys, rather than just operating as a blender.
“In the brown spirit space, pivots are much more difficult because that was six years ago that we made the decisions and the design rationale for Triple Oak,” he pointed to the bottle. “So we either got it right or we got it wrong, and we’ve got to do something different. If you’re a blender, then you just buy a different flavor profile, and then you just blend to match whatever consumers want in that moment. So it gives you a lot more flexibility.”
The good news is Alpine hasn’t needed to make many changes. Triple Oak and its Utah Straight are both highly decorated whiskeys, and the distillery found its market across 17 states.
But ultimately, Alpine’s whiskeys, much like Sara’s gins, are “a labor of love.” They’re Rob’s Olympic sport, and he refuses to cut corners on that pursuit of excellence.
From sourcing grains and dictating the milling process to considering and adjusting the pH of finishing water, each step is a careful consideration.
“The provenance of every decision is available at Alpine,” Rob said. “We’re not unique, but it’s definitely rare air. There aren’t that many distilleries where you can actually call and talk to the person who made all these decisions and then also ask, ‘Why?’”
It’s that transparency that people are paying for when they choose Alpine’s whiskeys.
“We do want people to be able to depend on us, but what I want them to depend on is that they know that we made these with as much attention to detail and as much commitment to the high quality as is humanly possible,” he said. “We feel that that matches Park City as a place.”