Colorado Awaits Wine

Filed in archive Wine Making , Wine Tours on August 30, 2006

Some areas of Colorado already produce a number of vintages, but as you get closer to the desert areas you'll find less wine. This, however, maybe changing in the near future.

From High Country Wine:
Guy Drew, who owns Guy Drew Vineyards on Highway G a couple of miles out of Cortez, insists that the high desert in the southwest corner of the state will eventually produce world-class wines. He isn't alone in his optimism. Growers and winemakers throughout the state say Colorado is a wine phenomenon waiting to happen.

Horst Caspari, the state viticulturist, says, "One day, we'll be so popular, you'll see Hollywood celebrities buying land here and opening wineries."

Colorado is not there yet. Save for a handful of producers, the wine isn't on the level of that from Texas, let alone California or France. The owners and winemakers are an eclectic assortment of lawyers, venture capitalists, oilmen and geologists, even a former British army Commando. They are still struggling to find the right grapes and methods for Colorado's peculiar weather and soil.

The state has more than 65 wineries, 12 times what it had in the early 1990s (and about two-thirds of Texas' total).

But what the wineries lack in consistency, the owners make up for in enthusiasm and determination. "Yes, we have a long way to go," says Drew, who was a trucking and shipping executive before opening his winery in 1998, with 155 acres on a hay farm. "But we're going to get there."