What Makes Colorado Wines Unique? Hint, it’s terroir and ingenuity.
"This is where the magic happens"
In my time in wine, as a seasoned wine judge and global wine educator with multiple wine credentials, I have had the pleasure of meeting great winemakers from the best wine regions in the world and tasting through their wines. I’ve learned their stories, their disappointments, and their successes. I know what goes into making truly exceptional wine. Colorado wines are enjoying their moment in the sun. Christened the “New Sonoma” by Food & Wine Magazine, modern Colorado winemakers are making waves across the country and garnering acclaim along the way. With national and international critical recognition from wine competitions, prestigious wine personalities like Vinography’s Alder Yarrow, the Wall Street Journal’s Lettie Teague, and Eric Asimov from the New York Times, and magazines like Decanter, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, and CNN Travel, now is the time to rethink Colorado wine.
To learn about the renaissance in Colorado’s wine country, I sat down with a few revolutionary winemakers to learn why Colorado wine is making such incredible strides now and what the future looks like for the country’s best, emerging wine regions. The consensus reveals that great wine regions are recognizable by their terroir-driven wine styles. Elevating Colorado wine is about embracing our climate and geography, and taking risks on grape varietals best suited to our short and challenging growing season. As a result, Colorado wine is finally developing a signature, an authenticity, that is uniquely Colorado.
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Read my recent feature “Worth the Squeeze” about Colorado wine in Denver Life Magazine’s August 2023 print issue:
“There has been a paradigm shift in what the consumer is seeking these days. Guests with adventurous palates visit our tasting rooms, ready and willing to be educated on new varieties and production techniques. It’s gratifying to watch someone new to the Colorado wine experience have an ah-ha moment. With a smile, they say, ‘Wait, this is Colorado wine?!’”
—Ty Wharton, head winemaker at Carboy Winery
“This is where the magic happens,” says Kevin Webber as he leads me through Carboy Winery’s Littleton crush pad. I’m here for a tasting led by Carboy’s head winemaker, Tyzok Wharton, who along with Webber and Craig Jones cofounded the Colorado winery brand in 2015 and has since helped put the state’s wines on the by a kitschy Italian winery famed for servicing clients by refilling their wine carboy jugs via filling station pumps, Carboy employs a similar method at its primary flagship location off of Santa Fe Drive. Carboy made a name for itself in Denver with a bar decked with wine taps fueled by kegs.
But to leave consumers with the impression that the wine that flowed out of those taps was more than just a gimmick, the Carboy team knew it all comes down to the grapes on the vines.
If you had asked me a decade ago what it would take for Colorado wines to garner such attention from oenophiles around the world, “magic” would have been the gist of my reply. I know wine—I’ve got a doctorate (abd) in the subject. I’m a multi-credentialed sommelier and global wine educator leading courses on three continents. My recent research focuses on the effects of climate change on wine, and I’m in the throws of writing a book that will present the information through a cultural lens. And I’m a Coloradan, raised here since I was four, which is among the reasons I’m also a judge for the Colorado Governor’s Cup winemaking competition. Until very recently, I wasn’t too keen on the wines being made in my home state. Sure, they were drinkable, even likable enough. But they weren’t very interesting; they didn’t excite the palate with an undeniable sense of place. My, how times have changed!
Read the full article in Denver Life Magazine, August 2024, print.