Around the Campfire
Locke + Co. Distilling: Two DU alumni entrepreneurs distill their success into support for the DU community
“How can you make yourself stand out and still be true to yourself? How can you do good in the community?"
Launched in 2016 by DU alumni Owen Locke and Rick Talley (MBA ‘09), 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 Coloradoan with a family history in the moonshining business, met Talley when they were students at Littleton High School in Littleton, CO. 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 of the professors we had during our MBA program.”
Colorado Roots
Each batch of Locke + Co. Distilling’s whiskey is aged by dropping in hand-cut, hand-charred aspen wood discs, cut from local aspen groves, that steep in the whiskey for eight months before blending and barreling. This results in “a taste like none other.” Developing the recipe began during a weekend trip with friends to Fairplay, CO, to a family cabin. Locke calls the first batch of aspen wood whiskey a “happy accident.”
“There are a ton of aspen on the property, so the firewood is always aspen,” he says. “We threw a chunk of charred aspen [...] into that mason jar, left it on a southern-facing windowsill all winter. [...] We came back in the spring and were like, ‘That’s tasting really good.’” That memory — of sitting around the campfire, and welcoming others to join them — became a compass for the company’s ethos.
Rick Talley hand-charring an aspen wood disc that will contribute to finishing a batch of Locke + Co. Distilling whiskey.
Rick Talley hand-charring an aspen wood disc that will contribute to finishing a batch of Locke + Co. Distilling whiskey.
The Denver Difference
Talley credits a lot of his business acumen and early success with the MBA program at Daniels. “We're really, really passionate about the university,” he says. “[DU] helped me hone in on what I wanted to do with my life. I can't thank the university enough for helping me see that, as well as helping to give me the tools to take the risk of starting my own business.”
Locke emphasizes that the company is also committed to the health of the environment, a value he and Talley learned at DU, where their professors instilled in them strong ecological values. “Our aspen-harvesting process is super sustainable,” Locke says. “We're not deforesting or anything. [Our process] actually helps spread the aspen groves out and cross-pollinate.”
Rick and Owen as students at Littleton High School in Littleton, CO
Rick and Owen as students at Littleton High School in Littleton, CO
“Without our community, we wouldn’t be here, and aspen trees wouldn’t be there without that interconnected weave of roots that connects the grove. This is all about connections.”
The roots that Locke and Talley planted at Daniels remain strong: today, their former DU classmates serve as ongoing mentors in the beverage industry — and even investors in the company. Locke and Talley exemplify DU’s 4D goal of helping students design careers and lives of purpose; every day, they apply the entrepreneurial business skills they learned at DU with their unique passion, connecting the dots across their experience to build a mission-oriented business. For these reasons, when it came time to build a philanthropic partnership, DU was top of mind.
Giving Back
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, PhD, about a collaborative product.
Owen with the special edition bourbon.
Owen with the special edition bourbon.
“It’s incredibly special to be creating something where the ingredients are so local and so tied to what’s going on at DU. When you put a sense of place, and sense of people, and sense of purpose together, there’s nothing like that."
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. The whiskey will be available to purchase online in November 2025 (subject to state regulations).
The result is a bourbon born from and that celebrates Colorado’s unique ecological makeup — a taste of the state’s only widespread native deciduous tree in every sip.
Since the beginning, giving back to the community has been at the heart of what they do, and so a collaboration with DU was a natural choice.
“We're passionate about giving back to the university,” Talley adds. “And so not only were we able to create a whiskey that was made with wood from the Kennedy Mountain Campus, but we're able to build in that philanthropic component, giving back and helping future students come to a university that helped shape us.”
Partial proceeds from this co-branded product will be donated to DU to support student success. “It kind of checked all the boxes, you know,” Owen Locke says of the collaboration. “Community involvement, donation, really good whiskey.”
The “+” in “+ Co.”
“‘Locke + Co’ means ‘and company,’ ‘and community,’ ‘and collaboration.’ It’s really [about] bringing people together.”
Locke and Talley are dedicated to making whiskey that is accessible to all. “In the past, whiskey was exclusionary,” Talley says. “If you didn’t drink it in a leather chair, while smoking a cigar, you were doing it wrong.” Instead, Locke + Co. Distilling wants to make products that bring people together, regardless of who they are or where they come from, helping craft joyful memories.
“The + Co [in our logo] doesn't stand for ‘company’ in the essence of a business,” says Talley. “It stands for ‘company,’ as in — when we grew up, our parents would always say, ‘Hey we're having company over for dinner.’ As in, guests in our home.”
“For us,” Talley adds, “there's no wrong way to drink your whiskey. It's your whiskey. And we just want to add people to the experience.”
“If you have a good whiskey on the river after you catch a big fish, the next time you have that whiskey, you're going to remember that fish, right?”
Locke says that their commitment to inclusivity sometimes manifests in surprising ways. He recalls that the first restaurant Locke + Co. Distilling supplied was a small pizza shop called South Side Pizzeria, where a server mixed their whiskey with Dr. Pepper. “Why not?” he thought. They want to let people enjoy their whiskey the way they want to enjoy it, without judgment.
What's next for Locke + Co. Distilling? To ensure that they can engage with a broader community, including people who don’t drink alcohol, earlier this year, they released a zero-proof spirit alternative called Headwater. Locke + Co. Distilling is always striving toward the next innovation that can increase their network, expand their perspectives, and invite more people into their circle. This is a business ethos that started at Daniels, but also around that first aspen fire pit. “I want to make that campfire ring a little bigger,” says Talley.
A Spirit of Community-Minded and Ethical Purpose
“My piece of advice for a student would be, meet as many people and create as many relationships as you can.”
Locke + Co. Distilling has a history of creating special releases to benefit causes they care about. They created a Big Blaze Bourbon, a whiskey aged with aspen charred by the East Troublesome Fire. Proceeds go toward Grand Fire Protection District No. 1 to support community fire assessment and prevention measures. That product was so successful that they had to increase production. “We tripled our batch size, since all of it sold out this year,” Locke says.
These efforts and collaborations demonstrate Locke + Co. Distilling’s commitment to ethical, community-engaged business practices that make meaningful differences. Using what they learned at DU, they hope to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs to apply their skills and passions for the greater good.
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