Colorado wineries make their case at Taste of Vail
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily
As winemakers from California, France, Oregon and more traveled from afar to set up for the Taste of Vail festival, Colorado wineries packed up their vehicles and merely drove a few hours to make themselves known at this year’s event.
It all started with the Debut of Ros茅 tasting on Wednesday where the first bottles were popped to kick off the festival. In a packed room with dozens of wineries, three of our state’s vendors 鈥� Buckel Family Wine in Gunnison, Sauvage Spectrum in Palisade and Carboy, which has multiple locations across Colorado as well as in Washington state 鈥� were pairing their pours with local history lessons and authentic Colorado hospitality.
“It’s an honor (to be here),” said Kaibob Sauvage, co-founder and wine grower at Sauvage Spectrum. Sauvage was born and raised in Palisade, the son of a peach farmer and water chemist, and has witnessed firsthand the growth of Colorado wine country.
“I’ve been in the business for 24 years, and the trajectory of Colorado right now is phenomenal,” he said. “I mean, everybody’s stepping up and we’re all pushing each other.”
More wineries from the state started to show up throughout the festival, culminating at Friday’s Colorado Wine Seminar & Tasting event at the Grand View Room in Lionshead. Kyle Schlachter, executive director of the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board 鈥� which promotes the state’s wineries, cideries and meaderies as part of the Department of Agriculture 鈥� was in attendance. Schlachter filled in the blanks on the state’s history with wine, which started in 1968 with a Denver winery that used California grapes, years before the Western Slope’s winemaking potential was discovered.
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“It was in the ’70s when grapes started getting planted. And then 1978 was the first winery to use local Colorado fruit. And then since then, it’s just expanded every year,” he said.
“We are making a statement here 鈥� there’s a lot of great wine consumers, a lot of great wineries from around the world, around the country here,” he said. “We want to be a part of that and show all the consumers here that you know we belong on that stage.”
However, Colorado still has a long way to go before it can meet the production levels of some of those more well-known regions.
“We’re still a real small industry, Schlachter said. “We’ve got about 170 wineries in the state. Our total production is just over 200,000 cases, which is a small international winery itself. And so all of our wineries are very small. But we’ve been growing every single year 鈥� the biggest hurdle is just to get people to try the wine because once they try it and taste it, they realize that we make really good wine here.”
As conversation flowed, the room of Colorado winemakers added one final pairing: pride.
“We think the wines here compete with the world. So we’re not afraid to be kind of compared side by side,” said Jordan Dickard of Bookcliff Vineyards, which has locations in Boulder and Palisade. Nicholas Games of Maison La Belle Vie in Palisade echoed the sentiment.
“It’s good to show off what our beautiful state can do,” he said.
