There's no getting around it, I'm wild about Colorado wine.
But it took me some time to realize that. When I moved here from the East Coast in 1982, the words Colorado and wine seldom appeared in the same sentence. This was God's country and ski country. It certainly wasn't wine country.
Several years later, when I discovered that Colorado actually had a wine industry, I was skeptical. But I was also intrigued, so I set out to learn about what was then a virtually unknown aspect of the state.
I learned that Colorado wines were made not just from grapes, but from cherries, peaches, apricots, plums, apples, and pears grown primarily on the Western Slope, in Mesa County's Grand Valley and in nearby Delta County. I sampled the limited offerings then available and was hooked by a Riesling from Colorado Mountain Vineyards. And I've been singing the praises of Colorado wines ever since.
Obviously, I'm not the only one. From the time I began following the growth of the Colorado wine industry, the number of licensed commercial wineries has increased from one to forty-one. Vineyard acreage has reached an all-time high of 500 acres. The state has secured two coveted American Viticultural Area appellations (Grand Valley in 1990 and West Elks in the Hotchkiss-Paonia area in 2001). And in fiscal year 2000-2001, Colorado's wine industry topped $5 million in sales. Not bad for a state that, thirty years ago, was making practically no wine at all.
Now I've got my eye on what may become Colorado's newest wine-growing region, a section of the Arkansas River Valley from Salida east to Cañon City and Florence that was historically a major apple-producing area. Whether it can now become a center for large-scale, commercial wine grape cultivation remains to be seen. But several industry leaders, growers, and winemakers believe its future looks bright.
The
Winery at Holy Cross Abbey opened in summer 2002 with former California winemaker
and wine consultant Matt Cookson at the helm. This winery, located on the grounds
of Holy Cross Abbey in Cañon City, will crush the first grapes from its
own vineyard in fall 2005.
Another major player in the Arkansas Valley's grape-growing aspirations isn't a winery at all. It's the Colorado Department of Corrections, which has planted 25 acres of grapes at its East Cañon Complex in Cañon City under the supervision of Jean La Perrieré, the patriarch of Arkansas Valley grape growers.
While its potential for grape cultivation remains unproven, the Arkansas River Valley is already turning out excellent wine. Mountain Spirit Winery, until recently the area's only winery, has earned national and international awards each year since its first 1995 release. Because Mountain Spirit's location--twelve miles west of Salida at an 8,000-foot elevation--precludes on-site grape cultivation, owners and winemakers Michael and Terry Barkett use Western Slope grapes and fruits to craft grape wines, fruit wines, and their specialty--unique wine blends made from both grapes and fruits.
Grape cultivation and wine-making are nothing new for Colorado. Settlers in the Grand Valley realized the area's potential as a fruit-growing region as early as 1883, planting pears, apples, peaches, cherries, plums, and grapes near the aptly-named town of Fruita. Sixteen years later, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported a Colorado grape harvest of 586,300 pounds and a wine production of 1,744 gallons. But Colorado went dry in 1916, four years before the national Prohibition statute took effect. By the time Prohibition ended in 1933, Colorado's wine grape vineyards had been completely uprooted.
The industry began rising from its own ashes in 1968 when Denver periodontist Gerald Ivancie started making wine from California-imported grapes at his Ivancie Winery. More importantly from an industry standpoint, Ivancie began experimenting with plantings of premium wine grapes in the Grand Valley. In the early 1970s, vines were also planted under the Four Corners Project, a state-funded experiment to test the economic feasibility of commercial grape cultivation and wine production on the Western Slope.
When Ivancie's winery closed just as the first Colorado-grown grapes were becoming available, the late Jim Seewald and his wife Ann, founders of Colorado Mountain Vineyards, saw an opportunity. They purchased the grapes themselves, producing their initial release of Colorado wine in 1978. Two years later, the Seewalds moved their winery, which is now called Colorado Cellars, to the Grand Valley hamlet of Palisade. Determined to make as much wine as possible from 100-percent Colorado-grown grapes, these industry pioneers planted their own 2.5-acre vineyard adjacent to the winery. With the release of their first "estate bottled" wine several years later, the Seewalds proved that Colorado was once again ripe for grape-growing.
Today, nearly 75 percent of the state's vineyards are located in the Grand Valley, with another 20 percent in adjacent Delta County and its North Fork Valley of the Gunnison River. These vineyards are at elevations of 4,000 to 7,000 feet--7,000 feet is considered the limit for wine grape cultivation--making them among the world's highest.
With the Western Slope firmly established as Colorado's premier grape-growing region, industry professionals are cautiously optimistic about the Arkansas Valley's potential.
"The Arkansas Valley is just starting out, and [the growers] are learning as they go," says Doug Caskey, executive director of the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board, which promotes the state's wine industry through its support of agriculture, marketing, and research. "In that sense, you can compare it to where the Grand Valley was a decade or two ago. So this could well become another Colorado wine-growing region."
