Vineyards and Winemakers

License to Swill

License to Swill

Colorado wine sure is fine

The Colorado Wine Industry Development Board has just announced its fourth restaurant recognition program, to single out restaurants that promote Colorado wine. Last year's winners were Juicy Lucy's (the original, not the second spot in Cherry Creek), the Mercury Cafe and Restauran ... More >>

Best Colorado wine

Canyon Wind Cabernet Sauvignon, 1996

Best Beer Store

The Wine Company

Best Beer in a Wine Store

The Wine Company

Bite Me

Booze News

Best Artisan Wine List

Swimclub 32

Cultural Feast

The annual Festival Italiano overtakes Belmar.

Wining and Dining

Boulder's food and wine takes center stage.

Wine & Dine

Boulder's food and wine takes center stage.

Talking Shop

Valentine's Day turns guys into sweethearts

Bug Love

A car show to exhaust VW fans

COLORADO'S WHINE INDUSTRY

THAT BOUQUET EMANATING FROM DISGRUNTLED LOCAL VINTNERS? SOUR GRAPES.

MOUTHING OFF

THAT BOUQUET EMANATING FROM DISGRUNTLED LOCAL VINTNERS? SOUR GRAPES.

Sip at Swallow Hill this afternoon

From 3 to 6 p.m. today, May 3, Swallow Hill's WineFest 2009 will showcase five Colorado wineries, as well as local cheese and appetizers made from Colorado-grown ingredients -- and, of course, homegrown music from FOMA and the Kantankerous Bluegrass Band. Swallow Hill is located at 71 East Yale Ave ... More >>

Biondi Santi tasting at Parisi tonight

Parisi, at 4401 Tennyson Street, hosts a wine-tasting and seminar on the wines of Biondi Santi, led by winemaker Luca Belingardi, at 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 20. The price is $50 per person (and includes imported Tuscan salumi, cheeses and bread), and reservations are definitely required; call 303-561- ... More >>

Jax puts its fin into the wine game

Jax Fish House, which is part of the Big Red F Restaurant Group, has introduced its own wine -- with the help of vintner Sineann, a small winemaker in Yamhill County, Oregon, run by Peter Rosback. That's after Big Red F head honcho Dave Query traveled up and down the West Coast looking something goo ... More >>

Tonight: Rare Slovenian wines at Table 6, bourbon at the West End Tavern

At 6:30 p.m. tonight, Table 6, 609 Corona Street, welcomes Slovenian winemaker Aleks Simcic and master sommelier Laura Williamson for a four-course dinner paired with the rare wines of Edi Sincic from Goriska Brda. Not impressed? Ray Isle, Food & Wine magazine's wine editor, called these wines th ... More >>

Today: A celebrity cook-off, wine-tasting event and the kick-off to Telluride's wine festival

Melissa Harrison Tonight, from 6 to 9 p.m., TrueChild, a national organization that works to abolish child stereotyping, is hosting a reception, silent auction and the "True Flavors Celebrity Cook-off" at Mise En Place, 1801 Wynkoop Street. The match-up features two culinary teams, one led by Top Ch ... More >>

Tonight: Wines from California vines at Opus

​Littleton's Opus restaurant, 2575 West Main Street, is hosting a wine dinner at 6:30 p.m. this evening with grape guru Lisa Rein, the associate winemaker for Row Eleven Wine Company, a producer based in San Rafael, California. The four-course menu, prepared by owner/exec chef Michael Long, in ... More >>

Whole Foods celebrates Fair Trade Month today with lunch "happy" hour

​We all know that drinking a glass of red wine a day is good for our health, but did you know that some wines are also good for the environment? October is Fair Trade Month at Whole Foods, and to help celebrate, Bernard Fontannaz, founder and owner of Origin Wines and winemaker for Fairhills ... More >>

Tonight: Daryl Groom winemaker dinner at Mel's Bar and Grill

​ Chad Clevenger, exec chef/owner of Mel's Bar and Grill, 5960 South Holly Street, is hosting a five-course winemaker dinner tonight with Daryl Groom, the former chief winemaker of Penfolds and Geyser Peak, who's now representing and making his signature private label, Groom. Groom focuses on ... More >>

Culinary calendar for the week ahead: Wine dinners and Breakfast for Boobs

A Flickr photo.​The upcoming week is overflowing with wine tastings and dinners, many to benefit great causes, but there's also a long-awaited beer release, the continuation of the Green Routes tour and much more taking place in Denver's culinary scene. Here's a taste of what's ahead: Monday, ... More >>

Drink in History

A Flickr photo.​The upcoming week is overflowing with wine tastings and dinners, many to benefit great causes, but there's also a long-awaited beer release, the continuation of the Green Routes tour and much more taking place in Denver's culinary scene. Here's a taste of what's ahead: Monday, ... More >>

Swirl Girl: Three reasons why wine tops give a good screw

Enjoy a good screw​The wine world has been buzzing all month over the latest issue of Wine Spectator magazine, which has finally acknowledged that not only are screw tops (aka Stelvin closures) perfectly acceptable for wine, they actually fared better than traditional and synthetic cork in te ... More >>

Five Oregon wineries to make you rethink your Napa habit

​For whatever reasons, Napa Valley is still viewed as the Holy Grail of wine destinations for a majority of American wine lovers. Don't get me wrong: I've been to Napa many times and there's no denying that some of the most fantastic juice in the world is produced there. But given the state ... More >>

Catch World Cup fever with five winning South African wines

​I've never been a fan of soccer, but seeing everyone get all fired up for the start of the World Cup this past weekend gave me a great excuse to revisit the other cool thing you've probably never realized about South Africa, and that's the fact that some rockin' good juice is produced there. ... More >>

Infinite Monkey Theorem winemaker Ben Parsons and Masterpiece Deli chef Justin Brunson team up to launch Lechon

Infinite Monkey Theorem winemaker Ben Parsons​What began as a friendship between winemaker and chef has morphed into a business partnership between Infinite Monkey Theorem winemaker Ben Parsons and Masterpiece Deli executive chef Justin Brunson. The two met not long after Parsons moved from P ... More >>

ColoradoWino.com gives voice to Colorado's growing wine industry

​Local food has crept onto just about every menu on the Front Range. And if Jacob Harkins has his way, local wine will follow. Last fall, Harkins started an online magazine called ColoradoWino.com that focuses on the Colorado wine industry, aiming to expose consumers and chefs to Colorado win ... More >>

FARM FRESH

​Local food has crept onto just about every menu on the Front Range. And if Jacob Harkins has his way, local wine will follow. Last fall, Harkins started an online magazine called ColoradoWino.com that focuses on the Colorado wine industry, aiming to expose consumers and chefs to Colorado win ... More >>

Five reasons why The Infinite Monkey Theorem might become your favorite winery

​It's a bitter drink to swallow, but Colorado's not exactly famous for making outstanding wines. Instead, an invitation to sample Colorado wines is typically met with anything from incredulity to utter scorn. That's not to say that all Colorado-bred wines suck. It's just that there aren't more ... More >>

Tonight: Pinot Posse Tag Team Winemaker Dinner at Fruition and Table 6

A Flickr photo.​Pinot, pinot, and more pinot: Eight cult pinot noir winemakers from California and Oregon (Owen Roe, Keefer Ranch, and Kosta Browne, to name a few) who make up the Pinot Posse will present their wines simultaneously tonight at Table 6, 609 Corona Street (303-831-8800, www.table ... More >>

Eight great Pinot Posse winemakers strut their juice at Table 6

​Imagine an evening wherein eight of the coolest, most talented and down-to-earth pinot noir producers present their hand-picked selections for you to taste -- and by taste, we mean consume liberal amounts of -- while you soak up stories about how the grapes looked at harvest and why the weath ... More >>

Pinot Posse wines spark Old World vs. New World debate

​Last week's post featuring the wines of the Pinot Posse sparked much debate over the respective merits and flaws of modern, new world-style pinot noir. At one end of the table, we had the new world wine lovers, who revel in bottles bursting with ripe, mouthwateringly juicy fruit, and (though ... More >>

The Infinite Monkey Theorem winery gets major love from Wine Spectator

​Valentine's Day came early for Ben Parsons, winemaker/owner of The Infinite Monkey Theorem winery. Not in the form of chocolate-covered corkscrews or any other such frippery; the gift he received was something every Colorado winemaker has been pining away for: a Wine Spectator score of 88 poi ... More >>

Think wine scores don't matter? Three ways to use them to help you drink better wine

​ Wow. Who knew that The Infinite Monkey Theorem (aka Denver's little winery that could) scoring Colorado's first 88-point Wine Spectator review would stir up so many passionate responses about the validity of wine reviews? Laura Shunk's scathing critique of most wine industry rags' random, s ... More >>

The Kitchen rolls out a farm-to-table wine list

The KitchenTim Wanner tasting at Hobo winery, a sustainable producer in Sonoma​When The Kitchen opened in Boulder seven years ago, it was a concept based on the idea of community feeding community, sourcing from local and sustainable producers and acknowledging their work while turning out bis ... More >>

Taste of Vail

The KitchenTim Wanner tasting at Hobo winery, a sustainable producer in Sonoma​When The Kitchen opened in Boulder seven years ago, it was a concept based on the idea of community feeding community, sourcing from local and sustainable producers and acknowledging their work while turning out bis ... More >>

Are organic wines worth the hype? Here are four worth trying

​You're a wine lover. You love our planet. So how many bottles of organic wine did you drink on Earth Day? Oh, yeah, that's right -- zero. And if our guess is correct, it's not because you didn't want to; it's because you had no idea how to drink organic wine. Getting to the straight-up truth ... More >>

Four perfect-for-summer Italian wines

​Italian wines can be hard to love. They're unabashedly old world, full of mouthwatering acidity, brazenly tannic, and as terroir-driven as they come. They're also endlessly intriguing. Each of Italy's winemaking regions tells the unique, richly historic tale of its evolution from independent ... More >>

Five Colorado wines (finally!) worth drinking by the case

​Have you ever gotten the impression that Colorado wines kinda suck? If you're really, really honest with yourself, you probably answered yes - and you're not the only person who feels that way. A glance at the wine list of many of Denver's top-rated dining destinations routinely reveals fewer ... More >>

Meet Lance Hanson of Peak Spirits

​The Colorado Cocktail Project, with its mission to create the official Colorado Cocktail, will celebrate this state's most liquid assets at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 1485 Delgany, on Sunday and Monday, June 26-27. We've already profiled many of the bartenders who've submitted recipes fo ... More >>

Three reasons why Colorado wines still suck (and three Colorado winemakers who are getting it right)

​Last month we attended the first annual Colorado Winefest - Denver, and for the first time tasted a number of truly delicious, locally produced wines we could recommend to you without pause. So you can certainly understand how we were legitimately fired up about an already scheduled wine-tast ... More >>

Is keg wine the next keg beer?

The Kitchen [Next Door]The taps at The Kitchen [Next Door] pour eight different wines.​When the Kitchen [Next Door] opened in Boulder earlier this year, it didn't have a single bottle of wine on the beverage list. Instead, the restaurant installed a keg system from which it pours three whites ... More >>

Three Cool Things To Know Before You Try Infinite Monkey Theorem's Monkey Shine

​Last Friday night, at a pop-up speakeasy on the rooftop of Ghost Plate & Tap, Denver wine lovers had their first opportunity to sample the latest cool kid offering from The Infinite Monkey Theorem: Monkey Shine, the winery's brand-spanking-new keg wine. IMT certainly isn't the first to join ... More >>

Five soul-warming Colorado wines to savor during the snowstorm

​Like it or not, for years people have habitually lumped wines from Colorado into its own special (read: inferior) category of domestic winemaking. Bottles from other, more mainstream wine-producing regions in the U.S., like California, Oregon, and Washington State, seem to score all the props ... More >>

Silver Vines Winery opens in Olde Town Arvada

​Brothers Jeff and Danny Chayer are originally from Minnesota, but they've spent the past four years working in the Texas wine industry. "He was a winemaker," Danny says of Jeff. "I was a manager of one of the wineries." There, they learned the ropes of the craft, and, Danny says, developed ... More >>

Indie Winemaker Dinner at the Kitchen

​Much like craft brewers, independent winemakers are at the cutting edge of all things related to their specific area of alcohol. And tonight, you can check out an array of grape innovations at The Kitchen, 1039 Pearl Street in Boulder, which will be hosting an Indie Winemaker Dinner. The meal ... More >>

Three CU grads launch Winestyr, a way to discover small wineries

​Bob Wilson graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in finance but wanted, he says, "to do something I was interested in -- something I thought would be fun." That's why he went into wine: "I ended up working with a distributor with a goal to work at a winery."