How do you know Jackie Thompson is a wine geek? Simple: She calls a triplet of 1982 Bordeauxs canoe wines because, well, she and husband Mike traded a canoe for them.

Who does that?

How about an imaginative couple getting ready to move to Boulder from Vermont in the early 1990s. The canoe couldn’t come, so they brokered a deal with a friend who had quite the wine cellar. “We couldn’t get the canoe from Vermont,” Jackie says. “He wanted it, we wanted his wine from his cellar.”

Fair trade, a lake-worthy vessel for a Chateau St. Julien, Leoville Barton and Lynch Bouch.

To be honest, that’s just scratching the surface of her wine geekdom. She could talk about the topic all day long in the proper company. Plus, she mixes the culinary acumen that might be expected of a talented winemaker (life doesn’t get much better for her than a prime rib and Bordeaux) with a passion for participating in triathlons to make sure she can keep up with the Boulder crowd.

It all leads up to her being the ever joyous and talented winemaker for Boulder Creek Winery.

The triathlon part of her story is the most recent development, a habit she picked up this year after spending the previous 19 as a runner. “I ran the Bolder Boulder every year; then I realized I am not afraid to swim.”

A natural progression in the world of fitness perhaps; her move into winemaking was a little more unexpected. Prior to her winery days, she worked in land-use planning, of all things. It’s a good thing she got out, and has a sense of humor about it:  “I’d probably just be a hopeless alcoholic because my job was driving me crazy,” she jokes.

The idea to switch to wine after moving to Colorado was far from instant, however. When she got here, she assumed the state wasn’t ripe for wine and could only produce low-quality wines from inferior grapes. “We came here when the industry was starting to take off,” she says. “I always wanted to make wine, but I wanted to make it out of viniferia grapes. I didn’t want to make concord wine; I didn’t want to make choke cherry wine anymore. I wanted to make good, real wine.”

She didn’t think that was possible in the Rocky Mountains until tasting one of the first Merlots from Canyon Wind Cellars in the mid 1990s. “I just said, ‘vineferia grapes grow here. It grows in so few places,’” she says.

Call that realization the initial seed to what is now Boulder Creek Winery.

Then it was a matter of meeting and working with John Garlich, the owner/winemaker at Bookcliff Vineyards around the corner from where Boulder Creek would eventually set up shop. She learned about producing wine at the commercial level, which included earning a wine certificate from the U.C. Davis’s enology program. (Jackie also studied plant and soil sciences while working toward her undergrad degree at University of Vermont.) 

This all has led her to making a diverse lineup of wines, beginning in 2003, with an emphasis on refined, food-friendly style that have won her awards for just about every bottling, including earning a prestigious Jefferson Cup (the first in Colorado) for the VIP reserve in 2010.

To think, she started her life as a lover of low-quality, homemade sweet wines, growing up in northern Vermont with her French-Canadian parents who fashioned themselves home winemakers. “We made it in crock pots,” she recalls. “It was not very good wine; fortunately I liked sweet wine growing up.”

When she met Mike, her palate started to change. He introduced her to the Old World of wine, bringing her first Germanic wines, then showing her all about Bordeaux. Turns out she took a liking to the luscious reds of one of the world’s most famous wine regions. Now she mimics those wines that first turned her onto fine wine, only using Colorado Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot rather than grapes from first-growth wine growing tracts.

But the most rewarding aspect of her career switch – other than the fact that she can enjoy wine 24 hours a day now – is the fact that it’s become a family business.

In 2008, Mike was able to retire from the high-tech sector to focus on the business end of the winery. Son Will, a University of Colorado student who just turned 21, has recently chipped in as the assistant winemaker, earning a gold medal for his first wine, the 2009 Gen Y Riesling.

“It’s really special to have something we can all share and take part and create,” Jackie says.

Will is even considering staying in the family business after graduation, despite his parents objections. “We would encourage him to explore a more lucrative career,” Jackie says. “You can’t buy a house, raise a family, put your kids through college on a 2,000-case-a-year winery, but you can have some fun doing it.”

It’s the fun that has kept Jackie’s interest for nearly 10 years in Boulder, which should make Boulder oenophiles feel infinitely lucky.

 “When we step back and look at it, we take great pride in it,” she says. “I can’t think of anything we could do in our lives that would be more fun than this.”