This article is an excerpt from “Around the Fire,” which was published in the digital version of University of Denver Magazine. You can read the full article on the magazine website.
Launched in 2016 by DU alumni Owen Locke (MBA 2009) and Rick Talley (MBA 2009), Locke + Co. Distilling is a locally owned and operated whiskey distillery committed to giving back to DU and the surrounding community. Childhood friends Locke and Talley reconnected as graduate students at DU’s Daniels College of Business. By 2010, the pair had become business partners, distilling their first whiskey batches aged in small barrels.
Locke, a sixth-generation Coloradan with a family history in the moonshining business, met Talley when they were students at Littleton High School in Littleton, Colorado. As teenagers, they learned about the “alchemy” of homebrewing by helping Owen’s dad make batches of beer, sparking a lifelong interest in the process that they returned to as Daniels MBA students.
“While we were developing a business plan, we relied on a lot of the resources the University of Denver gave us,” Talley says. “We leaned on a lot from the professors we had during our MBA program.”
A special-edition whiskey — a new bourbon blend called Aspen Signature Bourbon, aged using wood from aspen trees on DU’s Kennedy Mountain Campus — was released at DU’s 2025 Homecoming celebration. The collaboration is a celebration of Locke and Talley’s success at DU, as well as their belief in future DU students.
As the Locke + Co. Distilling team began producing aspen-aged whiskey as part of their line, Locke and Talley scouted the region for aspen groves, which is how they discovered DU’s Kennedy Mountain Campus. DU’s mountain campus is home to an abundance of aspen trees, so they started a conversation with DU’s chancellor, Jeremy Haefner, about a collaborative product.
The limited-edition bourbon that Locke + Co. Distilling created in collaboration with DU has been aged for five years in oak barrels and then finished with the aspen wood from the Kennedy Mountain Campus. To make it spicier, they also integrated amburana wood, crafting a truly one-of-a-kind product. DU alumni and friends were able to sample the bourbon on campus at DU’s 2025 Homecoming tailgate, and it’s now available at select retailers in and around Denver.