Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/89494
COVER STORY he Denver metropolitan area has a population of nearly 3 million people, the fifth-busiest airport in the United States, four major-league sports teams, the 30,000-student University of Colorado at Boul- der, and the Rocky Mountains in its backyard, to which folks from all over the world travel to ski, snow- board, bike, hike and fish. So it's no wonder that 42 of Colorado's 105 wineries are located in or have tasting rooms east of the Continental Divide, even though the grapes are grown a four- to five-hour truck ride away. Some 80% of Colorado's wine grapes are grown in the Grand Valley AVA, along the Colorado River near the Utah border. Yet more than 86% of the state's 5.1 million residents live in the Front Range, east of the Rockies. "While the industry is well-established and embraced by the West- ern Slope residents in Mesa and Delta counties, the urban centers of Col- orado Springs, Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins have been much slower to discover and embrace the Colorado wine indus- try," said Doug Caskey, executive director of the Colorado Wine Indus- try Development Board. "There have been win- eries in the urban cen- ters for decades, but only recently have some sprung up with higher profiles and intensified efforts to market to their urban neighbors. Among them are Balistreri Vine- yards, Bonacquisti Wine Company and Infinite Monkey Theorem in Den- ver, Augustina's Winery, BookCliff Vineyards and Boulder Creek Winery in Boulder, and the Wines of Colorado tasting room at the foot of Pikes Peak in Cascade." The Denver-Boulder area is a vintner's dream market: CHALLENGING CLIMATE Colorado has harsh, snowy winters and cold night- time temperatures during the growing season. Most of the state's vines are planted at elevations of 4,000 to 7,000 feet – among the highest in the Northern Hemi- sphere. Hard frosts are common, the season is short, and viticultural risks are high. Balancing those risks are long days of intense solar radiation, a lack of rain from spring through early fall, and relatively few pests. Palisade, in the Grand Valley AVA (anchored by Grand Junction) has one of America's most dramat- ic vineyard backdrops. The town is named for pal isades of Mancos shale that loom over grapevines, created by a combination of eons- old uplifting of the area and down-cutting by the Colorado River. The Mesa Verde sand component of the soils was eroded from the mountains and deposited at their base, mixed wi th r iverbed soils. The region is home to wine grapes, peaches and pears, its "Banana Belt" mild summer cli- mate a welcome respite from the icy winters. Winds moving through De Beque Canyon help to prevent crop loss due to spring and early fall frosts. Winters on the Front John Garlich and Ulla Merz of BookCliff Vineyards in Boulder prefer to be closer to their customers than their vineyards. Photo: Stephen Collector Range are too cold for Vitis vinifera and only a handful of growers have explored hybrid varieties. So John Garlich and Ulla Merz of BookCliff Vine- yards, Jackie and Mike Thompson of Boulder Creek Winery, Ben Par- affluent, educated, health-conscious, outdoorsy, keen on being green and packed with restaurants, wine bars and fine-wine shops. The 235 miles between Grand Valley and Denver are of little concern to winemakers who have traded breathtaking, high-elevation vineyard backdrops for proximity to wine buyers. It takes a con- certed effort – or an airplane – for Front Range residents to take a day or weekend trip to Western Slope wine country. Thus, some of wine country has come to them. WWW.VWM-ONLINE.COM sons of Infinite Monkey Theorem and other city-based vintners use refrigerated trucks to haul their grapes from Grand Valley to their urban crush pads. It's a trou- ble and expense they happily endure, with the payoff coming from having masses of potential wine buyers on their doorsteps. Garlich, a civil engineer, and Merz, a Ph.D. in com- puter science, grew grapes in their Boulder backyard and made wine in their basement beginning in 1981. In 1995 they purchased a 10-acre peach orchard in the Vinelands area east of the town of Palisade, under- neath the Book Cliffs, an escarpment that covers NOV - DEC 2012 VINEYARD & WINERY MANAGEMENT 47