It’s safe to say that Garrett Portra had never seen anything quite like Colorado’s Grand Valley AVA when he arrived there more than a decade ago. It was cold. The growing season was short. And, if that weren’t enough, much of it was as high as 4,500 feet above sea level, making it one of the highest wine growing regions in the world, comparable to Argentina’s Mendoza, Texas’ High Plains and several parts of Switzerland.
“There certainly are challenges,” says Portra, who started his wine career in mostly flat Missouri before moving to Colorado and buying Carlson Vineyards in Palisade in 2015. “Most importantly, how do you get the grapes to survive?”
It’s a question that growers and wineries have been working to answer for decades. “It requires a lot of TLC, given all the challenges, but there are a number of promising producers in the AVA,” says Jessica Dupuy, the author of The Wines of Southwest USA: A guide to New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and Colorado. “The key is matching the terroir to the grapes.”
The Grand Valley spans some 118 miles in the western part of the state, filling an oddly shaped box that starts 40 miles from the Utah border and runs to Palisade in the east, about three and a half hours from Denver. Most of the region lies on or between mesas and mountain ranges, crisscrossed by several rivers and with vines planted on slopes and the warmer valley floors. It’s Colorado’s most important growing region, with 30 wineries, nearly 800 acres under vine and accounting for more than 80 percent of Colorado’s grape plantings.
“We’ve had to learn about the problems so we could meet the challenges,” says Ulla Merz, who has owned BookCliff Vineyards in Palisade with husband John Garlich since 1995. “That means arid, so we have to depend on irrigation and dealing with who owns the water rights, and colder winters and challenges with frost.”
The weather has been a special challenge over the past several years, with below freezing temperatures in 2019 and 2020 that devastated yields and forced growers and producers to reexamine which grapes to grow. Viognier, grown on the valley floors, does well, but Riesling has long been the state’s signature white grape. The catch? Though it fared better during the freezes, demand has always been soft, says Doug Caskey, the executive director of the state’s Colorado Wine Industry Development Board. Hence, the harsh winters were a chance to experiment with other white grapes. One possibility is coldhardy hybrids, says Portra, who’s worked with Vidal Blanc and La Crescent, both as varietals and as blending grapes.
The state’s most successful reds include Merlot and Cabernet Franc; the former, says Herz, has shown amazing aging potential, while the latter always does well in the annual Governor’s Cup Competition. Red wines from Grand Valley, in general, tend to have more fruit than East Coast wines (though not as much as California). Cabernet Franc, for example, has less graphite and more cherry.
But whether it’s the climate or terroir, facing adverse conditions has been and always will be a part of the region’s identity. “If you look at the history of the Grand Valley, there have always been challenges,” comments Caskey. “But these are also challenges that the growers and winemakers understand, and it has helped them make quality wine unlike quality wine anywhere else in the world.”
Region Quick Facts
- Date AVA Established: 1991
- Total Acreage: 76,000
- Planted Acreage: 800
- Most Planted Red Wine Grapes: Merlot and Cabernet Franc
- Most Planted White Wine Grape: Riesling
- Climate: Arid, high desert
- Number of Wineries: 30
- Fun Fact: Only two U.S. AVAs are called “Grand”— Colorado’s Grand Valley and Ohio’s Grand River Valley.
This article originally appeared in the August/September 2023 issue of Wine Enthusiast magazine. Click here to subscribe today!
Last Updated: September 21, 2023
