On the last day of February 2020, Karen Hoskin scraped up all the money she could gather and bought the building on Crested Butte’s historic Elk Avenue that housed her Montanya rum distillery and restaurant.
Two weeks later she shut it down for three months during the global pandemic.
“I was sure we were in end times. Then we reopened into the hardest labor environment I have ever worked in and we were the busiest we have ever been because everyone wanted to come to Crested Butte,” said Hoskin, who 15 years ago started a rum company that became an international sensation and a model for female distillers worldwide.
Now Hoskin is getting out, joining a growing number of veteran hospitality business owners in Colorado ski towns who weathered grueling trials in the pandemic sufferfest. She is handing off Montanya Distillers to longtime employees.
“It’s an amazing feeling. They are so capable and they have so much institutional knowledge of the company,” Hoskin said. “It’s hugely relieving to have two people who are deeply familiar with Crested Butte and they have chosen to live here so they are not going to be sideswiped by any of the realities of a mountain town or the burgeoning environment of billionaires. They really understand the forces at play here in this community.”
A view of Crested Butte’s mainstreet, Elk Avenue, on December 12, 2021. Long time Crested Butte, Colorado resident and former owner of Denver’s Larimer Square, Jeff Hermanson has bought several Crested Butte businesses and buildings including The Last Steep restaurant, The Breadery Building and the old Montanya Rum building with the intention of bringing his vision of revitalization to the heart of downtown Crested Butte’s Elk Avenue. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Crested Butte’s historic Elk Avenue is in the throes of big change. Billionaire financier Mark Walter has bought many downtown buildings, including several restaurants on Elk. Walter has been quiet on his plans as renovations of his buildings are underway — unlike Denver Union Station developer Jeff Hermanson, a Crested Butte resident who also has purchased several buildings on Elk and renovated them. Hermanson recently re-opened the Last Steep restaurant as the Hideout. And in 2021 he bought Hoskin’s building, where he is planning a new restaurant with a local business owner.
The new owners of Montanya, which now operates out of a cozy cocktail bar on Elk, are head distiller Megan Campbell, former head distiller Renée Newton and Sean Richards, a Houston-based brand strategist. Hoskin, who created Montanya rum in Silverton before moving to Crested Butte in 2011, has spent her rum-making career as a prominent advocate for women and diversity in the dude-heavy distilling world. She said the new owners are “one of the most diverse and powerhouse owner teams in craft-spirits history.”
Montanya Distiller’s head distiller Megan Campbell, left, and former head distiller Renée Newton, are the new owners of the Crested Butte distillery, along with Houston-based brand strategist Sean Page. (Melinda Hulm, Special to The Colorado Sun)“They are really excited to tap into some of the diversity buying programs that are so common in the alcohol beverage world now,” she said. “Big corporations set aside millions of dollars to buy from owners who represent diverse categories.”
“A dream come true”
Life in Crested Butte requires dealing with “a steep learning curve,” said Newton, who arrived in Crested Butte in 2010, using her biology and chemistry degree at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory research camp in the mountains above town. The Hoskins lured her into distilling and she’s spent the past decade winding through every department at Montanya, including several years as the head distiller.
Becoming an owner of the company is “a dream come true,” she said.
For four months a year, the end-of-the-road mountain town goes dark. The other eight months are exceptionally busy. The roller-coaster economy challenges Crested Butte businesses, but Newton feels confident that Montanya, with an international distribution network, is poised to thrive.
“Having a rum distillery in a high-altitude town has a lot of benefits,” she said, noting the abundance of clean water and lower boiling points that hasten the distilling process.
She’s planning to expand Montanya’s support for locals in the offseason.
“We are all here for different reasons but we all share the same ideals around being part of this really special place and this special community,” she said. “We are planning to give back and curate a safe place that celebrates that community.”
Hoskin and her husband, Brice, raised two boys in Crested Butte. In 2012 they sold the Mountain Boy Sled Works operation they started in Silverton. Brice in 2015 started the Ganesha Cookstove Project, offering clean-burning wood stoves in developing countries and eventually marketing the lightweight stoves to backcountry travelers.
Brice plans to stay in the entrepreneurial space. Hoskin says she is “ready for a break from being in charge of everything.”
For 23 years she has run businesses and managed ever-expanding operations. She spent five years celebrating women in craft spirits as head of the Women’s Distillery Guild, which became part of the global Women of Vine and the Spirits group. Now she’s stepping back from mentoring and craft liquor.
She says she’s looking forward to “doing things I’m really good at.”
“The reality of being an entrepreneur is that you do all the things you are good at but you also have to do all the things you are terrible at,” she said.
English (United States) ·