A toast to local flavor: Where to find Park City’s best craft sips

PARK CITY, Utah — As a ski town, you wouldn’t necessarily expect a slew of award-winning distilleries and craft brews. The people behind these local spots are producing spirits, cider, beer and wine that are putting the mountain town on the map, one glass at a time. Here’s where to find some of Park City’s best craft sips this season.

Mountain Mixer cocktail contest winner: Adriel Danan

Adriel Danan wasn’t planning to enter this year’s Mountain Mixer cocktail contest. As head bartender at Dos Olas Cantina, he’d created Crimson Smoked the previous winter simply to round out the bar’s tequila lineup: a reposado, a blanco, an añejo, and, reluctantly, a mezcal.

The drink pairs mezcal with blood orange puree, Cointreau and fresh calamansi juice, a citrus fruit from the Philippines with a sourness distinct from lime, finished with a smoked paprika, salt and sugar rim. Danan said the fruit is what makes the smoke work.

“That smoke is what helps to create that perfect balance with the blood orange,” he said.

Crimson Smoked remains on the menu at Dos Olas through the fall, and Danan said he’s leaning toward keeping it for winter. Since the win, he said, it’s become a conversation starter behind the bar. Dos Olas closes for the season Oct. 3 and reopens before Thanksgiving with a new winter cocktail list. Danan, working alongside the restaurant’s new Mexico City-trained chef, is developing a cantarito, served in a traditional clay cup, along with a few other drinks still taking shape.

Guests who want to try the award-winning cocktail before the seasonal menu changes should stop in before Oct. 3. Once Dos Olas reopens for winter, guests can also catch Party on the Playa, a weekend pop-up bar and DJ set held outside every Thursday through Saturday from 2 to 5 p.m.

Alpine Distilling

Sara Sergent, master botanical distiller and CEO of Alpine Distilling, was nominated earlier this year in the beverage service category, a first for any gin distiller, and Alpine Distilling wants to celebrate with you.

Main Street’s Alpine Distilling has never been shy about turning a Tuesday night into an event. Between DJ sets and dance parties, homemade pie, paint classes, tastings, and a recent disco-themed art exhibit, the Social Aid and Pleasure Club lounge keeps a rotating lineup of activations that give locals reasons to come back, not just visitors passing through.

Sergent said the goal now is getting more Park City locals to rediscover what’s happening in their own backyard. New cocktails rotate through the lounge weekly, and guests can settle into the lounge’s “dopamine zone,” stocked with games and a communal knitting project or order a charcuterie board and spirit flight. Guests can also pick up the distillery’s spirits case, a curated set of Alpine’s full spirits lineup paired with 35 cocktail recipes for at-home entertaining.

Alpine keeps close ties with its neighbors in the local beverage scene, pouring Dendric Estate cider and Offset Bier at the lounge alongside its own gin and whiskey. Sergent said that mix of independently owned operations, with their own distinct feel, is what makes Park City’s craft beverage scene worth exploring.

Dendric Estate

Dendric Estate approaches cider more like a winery than a brewery. While most American cideries move fast, turning fruit into fermented, bottled product in a matter of weeks, Dendric Estate ages its cider on yeast for months at a time, a process that stretches nearly a year from harvest to bottle.

“We really operate more like a winery,” said Brendan Coyle, founder of Dendric Estate.

That approach shows in the flagship release, Dry Cut, a bone-dry cider with zero sugar and bright, high acidity, closer in character to a sauvignon blanc than a traditional sweet cider. It’s naturally carbonated using the charmat method, the same tank-fermentation process used to make Italian prosecco, giving it a similar effervescence.

Dry Cut is now available in two formats, a 375-milliliter bottle and a newly approved 750-milliliter bottle for statewide distribution, along with a 1.5-liter magnum that hit shelves last month. The cider is available in most liquor stores across Utah and in more than 150 bars and restaurants statewide, including the lounge at Alpine Distilling and the soon-to-open Tannin Bar at Quinn’s Junction. Dendric Estate also began shipping directly to consumers in six states last week: California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Texas, with more states planned each quarter.

A second release is coming before the end of the year or early in 2027, a darker, richer cider built with a higher share of French and English bitter sharp and bittersweet apples, giving it more tannin and body than Dry Cut. A third release is expected to follow in early 2027.

Longer term, Coyle said, the estate is planning a dry sparkling rosé made from Redfield, a red-fleshed apple variety planted this spring as part of a major expansion. Dendric Estate nearly doubled its planted acreage this year, adding 3,300 new trees across just over six acres, though a spring frost, like much of Utah agriculture experienced this year, cut into this year’s harvest. The orchard is fully organic.

Visitors can stop by the bottle shop Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. to purchase bottles and walk the orchard.

Proverbial Spirits

Every product at Proverbial Spirits carries a proverb. The gin is called No Rest for the Wicked, the rum is Loose Lips Sink Ships, and the vodka is Never Say Never, a playful naming convention that runs through the distillery’s newer lineup of canned cocktails too.

“We wanted the distillery to be playful and fun,” said Steven Currie, co-owner of Proverbial Spirits, who founded the business with his longtime friend and business partner, Rudy Lehfeldt-Ehlinger. Both spent decades in film and photo production before moving into spirits.

Gin remains the distillery’s specialty, and it carries through to Proverbial’s four ready-to-drink canned cocktails, the fastest-growing part of the business. More Bees With Honey, a bee’s knees-style cocktail made with gin, lemon, honey and ginger, and Two to Tango, a gin and tonic, have both won multiple awards, including a double gold medal and a 96-point score for Two to Tango, making them among the most awarded canned cocktails in Utah. Rounding out the lineup are Slice of Heaven, a summer gin cocktail with watermelon, lemon and honey, and Lead a Mule to Water, a ginger vodka mule. Currie said the goal was a well-balanced, not-too-sweet alternative to the sugary canned cocktails that dominate the category, made with no preservatives or artificial colors or flavoring.

Currie said the distillery leans local wherever it can. Its gin is distilled from Idaho rye and Utah corn, and the honey in its canned cocktails comes from a Summit County beekeeper. Proverbial also switched to a local can printer to cut down on its carbon footprint and has been removing plastic from its bottle labels at Recycle Utah’s recommendation, which said paper labels are easier to recycle.

Currie said the canned cocktails are built with the outdoor lifestyle in mind, easy to carry on a paddleboard or bike ride and meant to be enjoyed cold after time outside.

“We really want to change people’s minds about canned products,” Currie said, noting that most first-time tasters are surprised by how balanced the drinks are compared with what they expect from a can.

Proverbial Spirits is located in the Park City Business Commons on Forestdale Drive. Look for the distillery at Park City Wine Fest and at Freshtoberfest, a joint celebration with its next-door neighbor, Offset Bier, on Oct. 3.