Let’s get this out of the way at the start: I grew up in Colorado, and when I departed for California, I left a little bit of my heart behind in my home state. Despite my affinity for the Rocky Mountains, it took decades before I learned that Colorado has been a wine-producing state since the late 1960s, when Dr. Gerald Ivancie, an enterprising dentist, hired a young Warren Winiarski to put the first Vitis vinifera vines into the ground.
The Colorado wine industry has been on a fairly slow growth trajectory since then and has suffered any number of setbacks, including fires and killing freezes, such as the one in 2020 that destroyed more than 75% of the state’s vinifera vines. Nonetheless, more than 140 wineries now thrive in Colorado, working with more than 750 acres (over 300 ha) of vineyards, making it somewhat larger than Savennières in France’s Loire Valley and a bit smaller than Germany’s Ahr region.
In 2016, I was approached by the Colorado Wine Board to become a judge for their annual Governor’s Cup wine competition. I accepted and have judged the competition almost every year since. Consequently, I’ve been watching the industry closely as it has developed and can confidently say that Colorado wine has recently taken a big leap forward in terms of quality. The wines I tasted blind at the end of July were, without doubt, the best I have ever had from the state – by a good margin.
Growing at the bounds of feasibility
Colorado wine is grown at unusually high elevations for the northern hemisphere, ranging from 4,000 to 7,000 ft (1,200–2,100 m) above sea level. The combination of intense UV light, massive diurnal temperature swings, a high-desert climate, and early winters makes for an exceptionally challenging growing environment.
‘Most people think that because of our elevation, we’re a cool climate, but the truth is we’re really a hot region, with cold-region problems,’ says Charlotte Oliver, a PhD plant pathologist working for the Colorado State University Western Region Extension. ‘We’re like eastern Washington but with more extreme winters. Here we get fall freezes. We can have 30 to 40 degree [Fahrenheit] temperature shifts in October that can take out the entire vine.’
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Photo of Sutcliffe Vineyards by John Fielder. Courtesy of the Colorado Wine Board.
