Check it out:

Check it out:

Check it out:

New releases, new bottles.

Spring means a few things around the winery : It’s time to bottle the new releases and serve it with a whole bunch of good food along with it.

Starting April 27, we’ll begin hosting our annual barrel tasting wine dinners. And while we love to brag on the food, we really want the wine doing the talking. The 2012 releases (a mix of 2009 reds and 2011 whites) are tasting as good as any year in our history.

Especially on the red side: “You know, I think it’s one of our best vintages yet, in all honesty,” says Boulder Creek’s Mike Thompson. “I was drinking the Claret last night; I was blown away by that.”

There’s even one, youthful 2010 red in the lineup, a Syrah that winemaker Jackie Thompson used a new style with, fermenting the wine with full berries (instead of crushing all the berries) to bring forward extra fruit concentration in the final product.

Here’s what to taste in 2012 (and what we’ll be serving at month’s end):

The Reds

2009 Claret ($28), bottled and will be released in about three months.

This blend mixes Merlot (50 percent), Cabernet Sauvignon (30 percent), Cabernet Franc (15 percent) and Petit Verdot (5 percent. It is simply one of those wines the Thompsons love. Which is to say its rigid and structured, meant to cellar for a few years to allow the tannins to mellow a bit and the fruits to meld in. That’s not to say it can’t be opened today — it will be served at the dinners, after all — it’s just a wine that will improve for several years to come.

2009 Cabernet Sauvignon ($24), bottled and will be released in one month.

Mike is surprised that this is drinking so well right off the bat considering the nature of this grape. Plus he will be very happy when it’s pushed into the tasting lineup to replace the award-winning 2008, “which won a couple of gold medals, but I never really liked,” he says. The ’09 revisits the Napa-style flavors of the 2007. It features big, chewy and dark fruit flavors. It’s one of the few Colorado Cabs that mimics the varietal characteristics of a bold California offering.

Consensus II ($36) just bottled and not released yet. 

This blend, voted on by Wine Club members (see how it was made), is not surprisingly a pleasant early drinker. The blend (75 percent Merlot and 25 percent Syrah spread across two vintages) is velvety and smooth. The tannins are low and the fruits are rich and chewy. This release will be offered to Wine Club members first and available to the general public if supplies allow.

2010 Syrah ($22), released.

This wine, because of the full-berry fermentation, is much more fruit centered than usual. During fermentation, frozen clusters of Viognier were added to both keep the juice cooler and add just a hint of floral nose. The end result is a fruit-forward, easy-to-drink Syrah. It’s nose is a brillant mix of juicy fruit with a hint of flower clippings. It’s fun.

The Whites

2011 Chardonnay ($20) in limited release currently.

The latest release of Chardonnay goes back to typical Boulder Creek style, with balanced buttery notes taking control of the wine. The Chardonnay fruits are present, and the oak is integrated seamlessly into the flavor profile. For those who tasted the 2010, this is a stark contrast to that release which was heavy on pineapple and lighter on oak. Think more along the lines of 2009 for an idea of how good this is tasting.

2011 Viognier ($16), released.

This Viognier made by Will (his first crack at this grape), is nice, dry and crisp, showcasing the style of wine we’ve been developing with this grape in recent vintages. It has nice grapefruit upfront and finishes sharp, much like a Sauvignon Blanc. It’s a wine that will sing perfectly with your cheese plates this summer.

2011 Gen Y Riesling ($16), bottled and will be released in two months.

Will comes back for his third vintage of Riesling, and the winemaker’s son does another supurb job with this rock star Colorado grape. This year, with a 4 percent residual sugar left in the bottle, the mouth feel is large. It’s a great summer afternoon wine. The acids balance the sweet so it still feels like it falls in that “off-dry” category, much like a Spatlese version from Germany. It’s one of the most food versatile wines from this year’s class of releases.

2011 Dry Rosé ($16), released.

Boulder Creek first set out to make a dry Rosé almost exclusively for itself since the pubic seemed to want sweet, blush style versions. Well, a lot has changed in the last three years, and the dry style seems to be winning tasters over. This blend of Merlot, Syrah and Cabernet Franc meshes crisp acids and strawberry notes. The color is an intriguingly light pink, and everything about it tastes Provencal. “I couldn’t be happier with this one,” Mike says.

Doug Caskey has been at the helm of the Colorado Wine Board since 2000.

Doug Caskey knows a thing or two about Colorado wine. He’s been the executive director of the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board (our owner, Mike Thompson is a board member) since 2000. With more than three decades in the business, his career has spanned retail, service and education — plus a little bit of theater (he holds a masters in, of all things, theater from the University of Colorado). That’s not to say he’s a stuffy wine expert. Hardly. Caskey wears his trademark bolo tie to just about every event, bringing a touch of Western style to his job. Caskey checked in with us to chat about the state of the Colorado wine industry, which, surprisingly, dates back to 1899.

We got him talking a little too much, so we broke the interview into two parts.

• See part 2

Q: Where was Colorado 10 years ago?

A: When I left the retail industry to take this job at the beginning of 2000, I remember being incredibly excited as there seemed to be new surge of energy and creativity in the industry. I had been noting all the improvements in Colorado wine quality over the years, but it seemed to me that in 2000 we had turned a corner. The vineyards were maturing, the winemakers had more experience, and the wines were finally achieving a level of consistent quality that had been lacking in the previous 20 years or so, when the industry was first starting.

Q: And today?

A: The promise and improvement I saw in 2000 has blossomed into a world-class industry. The quality of Colorado wines — and not just from one or two wineries, but from dozens of wineries — proves that we can make outstanding wine in Colorado. Yes, we are still selecting the best varietals for many areas, and yes, we are still figuring out exactly how to deal with some of the curveballs that Mother Nature throws at our growers. That will never change, and Colorado-grown wines will probably always have greater vintage variation than California.

But now we have seen many cutting edge chefs and restaurants embrace Colorado wines, which we hardly ever saw 10 or 12 years ago. We have also seen wineries pass from one generation to the next, although that is still tenuous in our small industry. Yet even though the entire state of Colorado produces only about 1 million liters of wine annually — the equivalent of a medium-sized winery in Michigan or Missouri, or a tiny winery in California or Washington — we are firmly stamped on the wine map. Our wines garner respect and awards more consistently than they ever have. Now if we could just increase production.

Q: Where will it be in 10 years?

A: This is the great unknown. If the Colorado wine industry can’t find a way to increase its production economically while maintaining high quality standards, the future remains cloudy.

At this point in time, peaches are still more profitable to grow than wine grapes. So I don’t see hundreds of acres of peach orchards in the Grand Valley being replanted to grapes unless there is some catastrophic event for the peach industry, and I love Colorado peaches too much to ever wish that to happen. The Grand Valley may be our most consistent grape-growing region in Colorado (where most of the Boulder Creek grapes hail from), but we have not fully explored Montezuma County and the Four Corners area, nor all the nooks and canyons around Cañon City — both historic fruit-growing regions. I think there is still lots of room to grow in those areas.

But perhaps our biggest window for growth lies in the hybrid, cold-hardy grape varietals seen throughout the Midwestern U.S. and into the northern states. Grapes like Chambourcin, Vidal Blanc, Seyval Blanc, Marquette, Foch, Frontenac and La Crescent are currently unknown in Colorado and in many wine states. But there are already outstanding wines made from these grapes in Colorado (look for Leroux Creek Vineyards, Jack Rabbit Hill, Augustina’s Winery, Le Fuselier Winery and others). And other states have also had great success with hybrids and native grapes because they can’t grow vitis vinifera, the European varieties, at all or very well (I am thinking of Nebraska, Missouri, Minnesota, north Georgia among many others).

Whenever some of us make statements that hybrids are the future of the Colorado wine industry, we make many of our established wineries in the Grand Valley AVA very nervous, if not out and out mad. The Grand Valley is a fabulous climate to grow vitis vinifera grapes (which Boulder Creek winemaker Jackie Thompson loves!) — perhaps one of the best outside the West Coast. But as I noted, unless fruit growers start ripping out our fabulous peach orchards, the potential for growth of grape acreage in the Grand Valley is very limited. I am not suggesting that our well-established wineries give up on Viognier, Riesling or Cab Franc, all of which do outstandingly well in the Grand Valley. But I am suggesting that we should look to expanding grape production on the Front Range or in the cold pockets of the Western Slope where vinifera struggles, so that we can produce more wine.

A proprietary blend of Merlot and Marquette that a winery could sell for $9.99 would extend the production of a Grand Valley winery and the market penetration, since we have very few Colorado wines in the $10 a bottle price range.

We have proven to the wine world that we can make world-class wine in Colorado. Now we have to expand our production so that we can prove the same thing to Colorado’s very discerning and demanding consumer. That is the next step for the industry in my mind. But of course, I don’t have my personal finances invested in a winery or a vineyard. I just depend on the success of the Colorado wine industry for my livelihood.

• See Part 2

More:

• Check out our award-winning wines
• See what another expert, Master Somm Richard Betts, has to say

Caskey has seen the Colorado wine industry transform in the last decade.

Doug Caskey has spent more than a decade promoting Colorado wine as the executive director of the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board. Here’s the second part of his interview with us regarding Colorado wine and what wine he’d pick if he got stuck on a deserted island (not sure how that’d happen in Colorado).

• See part 1

Q: What will it take for consumers to start reaching, first, for a Colorado selection on the shelves?

A: The national consumer surveys tell us that the Millennial Generation, the under 30s, will pay more than $20 a bottle for wine at least once a week. That is way more often than the typical Baby Boomer or Gen Xer. Plus they are more willing to try new wines from grapes and regions they have never heard of (Can you say, “Rkatsitelli.?”) So as Millennials dominate the wine market more and more, perhaps Colorado and other regional wines will see huge surges in sales.

Nevertheless, I think that if we can find ways to offer more Colorado wines in the $8-12 price range, we will attract many new customers and reinforce their commitment to drink local.

Q: Name three grapes we should be drinking (and why)…

A: When world-renowned viticulturist Richard Smart from Australia did a presentation on grape-growing in Colorado many years ago, he noted the similarities in climate between the Grand Valley AVA around Palisade and La Mancha on the slopes of the Pyrenees Mountains in Spain. He recommended Tempranillo, and there is now some very interesting Tempranillo wines out of Colorado. They aren’t your typical Spanish red, but they are uniquely Colorado.

I am still a fan of Colorado Lemberger, the Austrian grape known there as Blaufrankish. It runs a parallel spectrum of flavors and intensity to Cotes du Rhone (light and berry-scented to deep and earthy) and is an ideal food-wine that does not have as much tannin generally as the Cabernet collections.

And if I was stranded on an island and could only drink wine from one type of grape for the rest of my life, it would be Riesling. There is no wine red or white that ages more majestically, no wine red or white that pairs better with the broadest range of foods, and few wines that rival Riesling in pure hedonistic pleasure and delight. Remember, not all Rieslings are sweet. The off-dry versions are perfect for spicy dishes and the bone dry Rieslings are ideal for trout or whatever fish I can catch on my desert island. Don’t come find me, I’m drinking Riesling (Boulder Creek won a double gold for our Gen Y Riesling, just sayin’).

Q: Can Colorado wines age well?

A: Reference my fantasy on Riesling.

Plus I had occasion to taste one of the Lembergers made by Colorado Mountain Vineyards in the early 1980s. It was enchanting without being tired at all. And I have a few bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon from the fabulous 1997 vintage that have just come into their own recently. So yes, Colorado wines can age. But remember that only a very tiny percentage of wine from anywhere in the world is really meant to age and doesn’t necessarily get better with time (Check out Boulder Creek’s drink or hold section for advice on our wines). Even Bordeauxs are significantly more approachable now than when I started in the wine business 30 years ago.

Q: What’s the oldest bottle of Colorado wine you’ve enjoyed (emphasis on enjoyed)?

A: The Colorado Mountain Vineyard Gamé, which they called their Lemberger back then, was a 1984 or 1989 I believe. It was dynamite.

Q: Surprise us with a Colorado wine fact:

A: The first post-Prohibition winery in Colorado was started by Dr. Gerald Ivancie in his cellar in Denver. He was taking a seminar at the University of California at Davis in the 1960s and met a recent enology graduate who agreed to be his cellar rat and winemaking assistant in Denver. That was Warren Winiarski who went on to found Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars in Napa and win the famous Judgement of Paris tasting in 1976.

Q: What would you like to see more of?

A: Did I mention that I enjoy drinking Riesling? I would like a glass of dry Riesling to start the meal and finish it off with a late harvest or perhaps something that someone put in a freezer, natural or commercial.

• See part 1

When Alfalfa's reopened in Boulder in 2011, it included a boutique wine shop.

Alfalfa’s was one of those iconic Boulder businesses, a market that was considered a trendsetter nationally in the natural food business, long before Whole Foods had moved to town.

Leftover Salmon even wrote a song about it.

Of course, those who know the Boulder natural food scene know the story of its brief hiatus: Through a series of transactions, it became a Whole Foods that was later shuttered when the FTC ordered the company to close stores to due to anti-competitive concerns.

Enter Mark Retzloff, the original founder of Alfalfa’s nearly three decades earlier, who was able to cobble together funding and re-open the store as Alfalfa’s at the corner of 9th and Broadway on Earth Day in 2011. The new store has one big advantage over the original: It has a wine shop, a boutique offering that features only 700 or so products across beer, wine and spirits.

Phil Morich, the adult beverage specialist at Alfalfa’s, was tasked with building an intimate, natural experience with the wine and alcohol program that mimicked the store’s overall concept.

The result is a wine selection that focuses on natural and organic selections, of which about 10 percent hail from Colorado, including a half dozen Boulder Creek Winery selections.

“What I’ve always been interested in is small artisan, hand-crafted and family owned,” says Morich, who spent the previous two years working at Liquor Mart as the wine manager. “I like the small guys, and I worry for those guys when you see the Yellow Tail stacked up everywhere.”

So there’s no Yellow Tail in the shop’s 650 square feet. Morich has to choose wisely since shelf space is so limited. “Every single product in that room was chosen for an absolute specific reason.”

On the sustainable plane, he looks for wines that feature low or no sulfates and come from grapes that were procured with minimal herbicides and pesticides.

Morich is a Certified Wine Specialist and a sommelier, but his culinary background is much more diverse than just wine. He started in fine dining — working at high-end restaurants in Sun Valley in the 1980s. Sun Valley is where he got a crash course in wine. As a dishwasher, he was invited at the end of shifts to taste through his restaurant’s vast selections of wines from Burgundy, Bordeaux and Brunello.

“Everybody would take their tip money and buy the bottles from the cellar,” he recalls. It was the 80s and those wines were still affordable.

His culinary love always went beyond wine, however. In fact, he’s even an avid mushroom forager, spending free time looking for the fungus throughout Colorado’s mountains. He also hunts and fly fishes, trying to find new ways to gather his own food.

“Mushrooms are my passion,” he says. “It’s great being able to have Colorado wild mushrooms.”

And whether he gets his own food — or fills a bag of groceries at Alfalfa’s — he immediately starts thinking about what wine will enhance the meal. Morich likes five ingredients or less in his meals, and he considers wine one of the five. The convenience factor of his wine shop is the fact that all the organic and natural ingredients to pair with his selection are just outside the door.

His only complaint is many customers comes in after grocery shopping, meaning they’ve already spent a week’s worth of food money and don’t always have a lot extra to spend on the wine.

“I love to see them early,” he says.

But coming in after shopping the produce, meat and cheeses sections does have its advantages. “We can look in their bag and see what they have,” he says. “If you are not using your wine with your food, you are really not drinking it.”

Phil’s food and wine picks:

Boulder Creek 2010 Gen Y Riesling ($15.99) and Thai food: “It’s really quite unique, here’s the second generation (winemaker Jackie Thompson’s son Will made this wine); that’s really important to me. I’m a big fan of Thai food and this wine goes fabulous with Thai food, especially the big green curries. It pairs stellar with that.”

Boulder Creek 2009 Cab Franc ($23.99) with tagliatelle and fresh mushrooms: “Cab Franc shows me what a winemaker can do when you pull it off in America. I’m a big tagliatelle pasta fan, especially with our summer Boletes (basically a Colorado porcini). It’s just having fresh mushrooms and that Cab Franc, it is my favorite with it.”

Find our wine:

• Buy Boulder Creek wines at Alfalfa’s, 1651 Broadway, Boulder. Call 720.420.8400 for info.
• Or visit the Boulder Creek Winery tasting room
• Row 14 in Denver 

Wines in this article:

• Gen Y Riesling
• Cabernet Franc

Boulder Creek Winery Reserve Claret

Sometimes you get a little bit lucky and put a name on a bottle just in time. We released a blend of Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from the 2003 vintage, settling on the name Claret, a homage to wines from Bordeaux and the style they produced that vintage.

In 2006, just two years after that popular release, the European Union moved to protect the name, coming to an agreement with the U.S. Government to forbid the use of popular wine terms such as Chablis, Champagne, Port and Claret stateside.

So using Claret on a U.S. bottle isn’t allowed anymore — except wineries that used the term pre 2006, a fact somewhat forgotten over the last eight vintages by us. It only recently came to light when winemaker Jackie Thompson opted to create a second Claret blend with the 2009 vintage.

The term Claret dates back to the 18th century, with roots (where else?) in France. It often describes a bold red of Cabernet and Merlot, among other grapes. Basically, it’s a Bordeaux that’s not from Bordeaux. That wasn’t always the case. It actually started as a name for a very dark version of rosé, named Clairet. While that definition fell out of favor in the early 19th century, the big red version maintained.

The more common use of Claret was on the mind of the Thompsons when they created the 2003 wine, a blend of Cabernet Franc (55 percent), Merlot (30 percent) and Cabernet Sauvignon (15 percent). They actually considered naming it a Meritage — another not Bordeaux Bordeaux name — but found out there was a $1.20 per case royalty for that term. The wine itself was very popular among wine geeks in Boulder who had a firm understanding of Bordeaux wines, meaning it was tannic with ageable structure. That wine is hitting its prime right now, just as its sibling is about to be released.

The 2009 Reserve Claret (which will be available in late April) wasn’t specifically planned. It wasn’t until the January blending of Consensus — a wine club event that has members vote on the final blend for the winery’s reserve wine — that the idea was born.

See, this blend of Cabernet Sauvignon (50 percent), Merlot (30 percent), Cabernet Franc (15 percent) and Petit Verdot (5 percent) received the second most votes from wine club members deciding on Consensus. Mike and Jackie Thompson loved it though, deciding to bottle it separate from the Consensus blend winner under the Claret moniker from several years prior.

Of course when the Claret labels were submitted for approval from the state last month, they were denied before the winery was able to prove that it was grandfathered in to allow usage of the term.

It’s a good thing the state came around.“Somehow the name ‘Runner Up’ just didn’t seem to work,” Mike says.

More:

• Head to the wine shop
• Our best vintages

If you look up classic Boulder restaurant, there’s really only one eatery that should be listed beside the definition: The Flagstaff House, which sits a few miles up the windy road that leads up to the restaurant’s namesake mountain.

It has the stellar wine list, four decades of history, white linens and four-star cuisine befitting of the finest restaurants in the state. (The Flagstaff House also features Boulder Creek Winery’s 2010 Viognier and Consensus on its list and will partner with the winery for the third consecutive year at the Taste of Pearl in April!)

Credit chef Mark Monette (co-owner with brother Scott) for helping usher it from its early days to the cutting edge haute cuisine on the plate today. He’s the man behind the menu at the venerable fine-dining experience of Boulder, a position he’s held for more than a quarter century.

“As things have evolved in cuisine in the restaurant world, we’ve evolved with it,” Mark says. “We were the leader of the pack.”

His career at the restaurant started before he could drive. At the age of 15, he was working as a server, well before he was allowed to take alcohol to a table. “I would have to tip out the bartender to take it over,” he recalls.

It was the beginning of his love affair with the culinary industry. But before he could really turn food into his career, his father issued a reality check: Mark had to learn to cook if he wanted to make it in the business. Forgoing the idea of heading to culinary school, he went looking for some real-world experience. Luckily he met Bernard Herrmann, a world-class chef by just about every measure of the distinction. Herrmann would become Mark’s mentor.

Staring with Mirabelle in Beaver Creek, Mark followed Hermann to New York to begin staging (the French word for interning) at a series of three-star Michelin restaurants that took him to Napa and France. “You work a ton,” he says. “You do what it takes.” That meant long hours cleaning, cooking, prepping and more, all without earning a dime.

Leaving Colorado was key. “This was the early 80s, and cuisine wasn’t that hot.” He recalls seeing the chefs at Flagstaff House chewing tobacco during shifts and, in general, falling short of the high-level of professionalism needed in the fine dining world. His stints in Napa, New York and France showcased exactly how it was meant to be done.

“You can go to culinary school and spend $40,000,” Mark says. “But there is nothing quite like practical experience. Work for the best, the people that have made it in the business.”

When he returned to take over the kitchen in Boulder in the 80s, it was time to step up the culinary scene in a town filled with educated, well-traveled diners ready for new flavors. Almost. Mark remembers adding ingredients such as foie gras and truffles to the Flagstaff menu. “No one knew about them so they wouldn’t buy it.” Eventually, finer palates prevailed and for the last 25 years, Flagstaff House has served food that matches its epic dining room views.

Part of that evolution has included creating one of the deepest and most impressive wine lists in the world, one that features the complete vertical of Château Mouton-Rothschild’s famed artist series and several bottles that pre-date many Boulderites birthdays. For that work, Wine Spectator has awarded it the Grand Award for its 20,000 bottle cellar every year since 1983. (While the list is impossibly long, it’s all easily navigated by iPad, meaning diners can find the perfect wine with the swipe of an index finger).

Mark works hand-in-hand with the staff sommelier and cellar master to create flavors that will work with the wines on the list. He doesn’t get to dig into the stash of decades old wines that often, though. Unless there’s a strike of luck in the dining room.

“Occasionally the guests will send something [as in wine!] back — occasionally, a taste — if they want to make sure their food is going to be delicious,” Mark says. He jokes of being bribed, of course, but some guests do send him a sip of bottles that cost several thousands of dollars. Those are really good nights.

Now it would be easy to imagine a restaurant with 41 years under its belt (and a chef who’s led the kitchen for more than 25) to rest on its laurels. Not the case. Up until 10 years ago, Mark would seek out cooking opportunities at the same caliber of restaurants that originally gave him his start in the chef world. While he has stopped that due to time constraints, he still dines at these epic eateries and learns a ton just from exploring with his sous chefs in Boulder and executive chef at Flagstaff’s sister restaurant, Monette’s on the Big Island of Hawaii.

“You continue to travel and learn and educate yourself,” he says, launching into a descriptions of several cutting edge dishes he whipped up with the help of his creative staff. “I bring this stuff back to the staff, and they are craving all this cool stuff,” Mark says.

It’s obvious it’s still fun for him, even after all these years. That’s really what keeps it fresh.

Mark’s pairing idea: Boulder Creek 2010 Viognier with any of the white fish menu items (which change frequently).

“I would go with a white fish, John dory or something like that. I like (the Viognier) a lot. It’s a pretty wine that goes with a lot of things.” During the 2011 Taste of Pearl, he paired it with a special gingered cous cous served in a cone with ahi tuna. It was a hit, and part of the reason the restaurant and winery will team up again at this year’s event.

More:

• The best wine list in Denver? Hint, we’re on it
• Buy a case (or three)

The Feb. 10 episode featured a good, early morning Colorado wine drinking session. ”Now we are going into the hotbed of winemaking in Colorado, Boulder,” Harkins said.

The surprised panel of hosts agreed after tasting Consensus and a selection from our good neighbors over at Bookcliff Vineyards (we pop in around the 36-minute mark and the Colorado wine talk comes in around 16 minutes).

“This is a really nice, well-balanced wine, and  if you want to talk about a cool looking label,” Harkins said of the Consensus. We couldn’t agree more.

More:

• Buy a bottle of Consensus ($36)
• See us in the news
• Join the wine club and help make Consensus  III