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We all started somewhere: Colorado’s amateur winemakers show up every year
Assessing wine, especially from amateur winemakers who often lack the equipment, time and experience of commercial winemakers, is time to reflect. Photo & story by Dave Buchanan.
Traditions take over during the middle months of fall. Homecoming, hunting season, Halloween, Thanksgiving. And one more, the annual Colorado Amateur Winemaking Competition.
You might have missed the last one, but it’s been happening every fall for 15 years or more.
“I remember judging wines in the little building at Palisade Town Park, while the (Colorado Mountain) Winefest was going on outside in the park,” recalled Monte Haltiner during Saturday’s latest competition. “We were judging in this tiny room and all the winemakers were sitting on the opposite side of the table, watching us all the time. It was nerve wracking.”
That was before Winefest outgrew the Town Park and moved to its present location at Riverbend Park.
Haltiner now is the head judge/coordinator for the amateur competition, which is run under the auspices of CAVE (Colorado Association for Viticulture and Enology), the folks who bring us Colorado Mountain Winefest.
No judging for Haltiner, except in case of a tie or question about protocol, but he’s busy keeping the actual judges on task.
After the state Legislature this year okayed a change that effectively allows amateur wines (unlicensed, unbonded) to be opened and served at state-licensed establishments, Saturday’s judging was held in a conference room at Wine Country Inn.
In past years, the amateur competition has been held in awkward off-site places such as outbuildings, cottages and the like. This venue change not only makes the judging more comfortable and efficient, it opens the door to Palisade hosting some large-scale amateur competition.
“The international competition attracts several thousand winemakers and usually is held in California or Back East,” Haltiner said. “We’d love to have that event here in Colorado.”
This year’s International Amateur Winemaking competition was held in West Dover, Vt., and attracted 2,497 different wines.
Saturday’s Colorado competition had six judges (disclaimer: I was one of the judges) sipping and spitting their way through 94 wines, 20 flights in all, ranging in size from three wines to seven. Or was it eight, nine maybe?
One forgets to count after 80-some wines.
The results will be announced in January at the annual VinCo conference and trade show Jan. 15-18 at Two Rivers Convention Center.
Waiting out the storm: surviving a wine crisis in North Texas
Laura Giles (@lgiles) posted this Friday on her Twitter account with the cutline “Rare image of the last known fuel shipment for North Texas.”
A blog post Friday from my friend Susannah Gold got me thinking about the Texas wine industry post-Hurricane Harvey and while Texans have plenty to worry about, a call to blogger and author Jeff Siegel in Dallas found him stewing a bit over the situation.
“We’re close to having a wine crisis here,” lamented Siegel, a regular at the Colorado Governor’s Cup Wine Competition and one of the founders of the popular Drink Local Wine movement.
A crisis created not by a hurricane-induced wine shortage but by a citywide bout of gas-buying panic, creating immense lines and unnecessarily depleting some gas stations.
“It was plain old pure panic,” said Siegel, noting his problems are minuscule compared to the challenge facing thousand of his fellow Texans. “It was 1973 all over again.”
That was the year when an oil embargo from OPEC pushed the price of crude from around $3 per barrel to nearly $12 (today it’s around $47) and touched off panic buying and hoarding at gas stations all across the U.S.
In his attempt to fill the nearly empty tank of his compact car, Siegel found long lines tying up gas stations and reports surfaced of people pumping gas into 50-gallon barrels and every container they could find, hoping to stave off, well, what? Despite the damage done by Harvey in and around Houston, Dallas is 250 miles from the center of action and while some supplies have been curtailed, officials said the area has plenty of gas.
“Long lines at North Texas gas pumps fueled panic and crippled regular supplies at gas stations, causing temporary disruptions,” said local officials. It continued, “Outages and low supplies are expected to vary throughout the state.”
But what about the Texas wine industry, the fourth-largest in the country? It turns out the great majority of Texas wine country is far away from Houston and missed the big hit, said Mark Hyman of Llano Estacado Winery near Lubbock in the High Plains area of west Texas.
Llano Estacado produces 162,000 cases per year (Colorado produces about 150,00 total) and its grapes come from the High Plains and the vineyards “in far, far West Texas,” Hyman said.
Hyman said some vineyards in the Texas Hill Country region around San Antonio felt the effects of Harvey but most of the wine crop already was in.
“We got some rain (before Harvey hit land) but it dried out in time for harvest,” Hyman said. “The whites are pretty much done and the reds are just coming out. We’ll be finished by the end of September (or early) October.”
As for Siegel, whose blog focuses on affordable wines, he’ll be OK. Among the wines he still has on hand are a Cantina Vignaioli Barbera d’Alba 2014 ($15) and a Tenuta Sant’Antonio Scaia Rosato ($10), which he highly recommends for being “cheap and tasty.”
That we should all have such a crisis.
Wineries shine like gold during Governor’s Cup competition
Judges at the 2017 Colorado Governor’s Cup Wine Competition swirled, sniffed and sipped through 346 wines during the two-day event. Among the judges pictured are, from left, Jenni Baldwin-Eaton (plaid shirt), Warren Winiarski and Wayne Belding, closest to camera. Story/photo by Dave Buchanan
The 2017 Colorado Governor’s Cup Wine Competition came and went over the weekend and of the 12 wines selected for the Governor’s Case were two white wines (including a sparkling Albariño), seven red wines, one fruit wine, one cider and a mead.
The Best of Show wine will be announced Aug. 3 when all the medal winners are celebrated at the official Colorado Governor’s Cup Tasting held at History Colorado Center, 1200 Broadway in Denver. Information here.
This year’s judging featured 324 wines from 46 wineries, a welcome jump of about 25 percent over last year in both categories but still well short of where the competition could be. Colorado now has close to 150 wineries, so less than a third of them take part in the contest.
Wineries offer many reasons for not entering this and other competitions, like they simply forget to send their applications in time or it costs too much or they don’t have the wine to spare. But just as Colorado Mountain Winefest brings Colorado wines to a diverse audience, in the end the Governor’s Cup contest is a boon to the state industry.
The 12 selected wines in the Governor’s Cup case are used to promoted Colorado and Colorado wines and are featured at state dinners and marketing events.
It’s notable to add that this year’s entries in the cider/mead category also eclipsed last year, indicating the continued growth of artisanal ciders and meads. Well, ciders, anyway.
Four ciders and three meads were selected for the final round of judging, which again raised the familiar argument of whether there should be a separate competition for the non-grape segment of the wine industry. You can argue all you want as to whether ciders and meads actually are wines or should be in their own category but you’ll get no take from this side.
Last year there was a separate six-pack case of ciders and meads selected to accompany the regular Governor’s Cup case but this year it will be a mixed case. There was some discussion about separating the judging (that’s been tried in the past with fruit wines) and having separate Best of Show awards and Governor’s Cup cases for grape wines and for cider and mead. The problem is that separation adds to the cost of the competition.
The Governor’s Cup case wines (and their respective medals) includes: Bookcliff Vineyards (2016 Riesling, double gold); Carlson Vineyards (2015 Tyrannosaurous Red, gold); Colorado Cellars/Rocky Mountain Vineyards (nv Raspberry, double gold); Colorado Cider Company (Grasshop-ah cider), double gold); Creekside Cellars (2014 Cabernet Franc, double gold); and Guy Drew Vineyards (2015 Syrah, double gold).
Also: Meadery of the Rockies (Strawberry/Honey, gold); The Infinite Monkey Theorem (2013 Albariño (sparkling), double gold); Two Rivers Winery (2013 Port, double gold); Decadent Saint the Winery (2013 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, gold); Whitewater Hill Vineyards (2016 Sweetheart Red, double gold) and Winery at Hold Cross Abbey (2015, Merlot, gold). The final medal total was eight double gold medals, 16 gold medals, 140 silver and 103 bronze, totally 267 medals out of the 346 entries.
Nothing wrong with Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, except the price
(Photo courtesy Creative Commons)
Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards in Napa Valley command upwards of $300,00 per acre, especially when it means old vines, such as these at Chateau Montelena near Calistoga, Cal. High land prices is just one reason ultra-premium wines command premium prices.
The last time I encountered Rick Rozelle he was working the wine aisles at Fisher’s Liquor Barn in Grand Junction. The meeting wasn’t completely surprising since that’s where I usually find him, dispensing knowledge and turning on clients to good buys in wines.
This time he was doing something I’d heard him do before but always enjoy hearing – talking a customer out of a pricey top-shelf wine in favor of purchasing something more affordable yet just as tasty.
Once the client left, bottle in hand and smile on face, Rick and I spent a few minutes talking and he noted how many people look first to the top shelf, where you find the Screaming Eagles and Opus Ones of the wine world, as the starting point for what’s out there.
Nothing wrong with that, except that both those ultra-premium cabs will put a big dent in your bank account. On the online wine-searcher.com, a 2013 Opus One averages about $150 a bottle, “and you can get a whole lot of great wines for much less,” laughed Rozelle.
Finding the right Cabernet Sauvignon (or any wine) at just the right price often entails searching through a wall of wine. Photo by Dave Buchanan
On the whole, I consider most those upper-shelf Cabs over-priced, although that’s subjective to what you have in your pocket at the time, right?
“We’ve had people buy cases of it for weddings and stuff, so it’s not like it doesn’t sell,” Rozelle noted.
Cabernet Sauvignon remains “America’s most beloved red wine,” wrote Food & Wines eminent wine writer Ray Isle way back in 2005. “In 2009, California crushed almost 450,000 tons of Cabernet grapes, an amount roughly equal to one bottle per person for the entire U.S. population.”
One reason Cabernet Sauvignon still is so popular (it’s the second most-sold wine, period, right behind Chardonnay) is that among those millions of bottles are many selling for under $10, although you won’t find many really good California Cabs at that price.
You might find something from my colleague Jeff Siegel (www.winecurmudgeon.com) , who puts the cut-off line around $10 but has been known to inflate that number a bit when the wine is particularly good.
“Listen, it’s not easy finding cheap Cabernet Sauvignon that tastes like Cabernet Sauvignon,” said Siegel during the 2016 Colorado Governor’s Wine Competition for which he was a judge. “If there were, I’d drink more of it.”
He earlier wrote about Avalon Cabernet Sauvignon, which he described as offering the quality of Napa cabernet “at two-thirds to three-quarters of the price of comparable wines.”
The grapes aren’t Napa – they come from Lodi, Paso Robles, and Monterey County. Which is why Fisher’s Liquor Barn carries the 2014 vintage for under $10.
Siegel, who will return to Denver next month for the 2017 edition of the Governor’s Cup, wrote in a recent blog post that too many “value priced” Cabernets “are fruity and sticky, without the heft and tannins that cabernet is supposed to have— call them cabernet lite.”
“Or, if they taste like cabernet, they cost at least $20, and that’s not the point of what we do here,” Siegel wrote.
Why are Napa Cabernets so good, a fact that helps even inexpensive Cabernets from elsewhere succeed?
Some of the world’s best and most-desired Cabernet Sauvignon comes from Napa Valley. This Beaulieu Vineyard 2014 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is a value and can be found for as low as $25. Photo by Dave Buchanan
Simply, Napa Valley has the perfect climate and soils for growing the grape. But Napa Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are the highest-priced grapes in California, which means along with accelerating land costs ($300k-plus per acre), the price of a bottle of wine continues to grow.
Mike Fisher, on the blog Vinsights, wrote that grape costs should not exceed 25-percent of a wine’s selling price for a winery to experience a “reasonable profit.”
Because Napa grape costs are the highest in California, Fischer noted, virtually all red wine made with Napa grapes must be retail priced at $40 or more per bottle for the winery to receive a reasonable profit.
But wait. There are a lot of grapes being grown outside of Napa, and that’s where we should look for affordable Cabernet Sauvignon.
Paso Robles, Lodi, Monterrey, Central Coast, the list goes on of places where Cabernet Sauvignon thrives. And that’s just in California.
What about Washington, Chile and Italy?
Cheaper land plus cheaper grapes equal affordable and delicious California and California-quality Cabernet Sauvignon.
And if that’s not enough, Wines&Vines online recently quoted Tony Correia, a real estate appraiser and consultant from Sonoma, Cal., saying, “Any land that’s in Napa Valley, in the watershed of the Napa River, that can be planted to Cabernet and produce a good crop of Cabernet is being planted today, and they can make a call and sell the fruit for $5,000, $6,000 $7,000” per ton.
That’s about 3.5 times what those grapes cost in 1995, when the average price per ton was $2,000.
One more thing. One reason some of the ultras are so ultra is cachet. People want to feel important and have other people say nice things about them and one way to impress is to pour a wine everyone knows cost a king’s ransom.
“But that’s not what we’re here for,” to repeat Siegel’s riposte.
Wine Openers 