Fruit of the vine (and others) in Fruita

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Trip Start Jul 05, 2008 Previous
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  Fruita, Colorado, United States
Tuesday, July 29, 2008

As I mentioned in the previous entry, we discovered that Grand Junction and Fruita area are a wine making center in Colorado. As we've traveled, we've found that they seem to make wine everywhere. It's amazing that they can find anyone to drink it all! In any case, we set out to sample the local product. Our first stop was at Two Rivers Winery. The tasting room is paired with a conference/event center and a small B&B. The wines were very good! They made a very nice Chardonnay (which I'm enjoying as I write) as well as Viognier and Syrah. The grapes here still look like little tiny peas. They harvest well into late October and November to give the grapes enough time to develop character as well as sugar. From there it was on to Ptarmigan Winery. Again, my favorite wine here was a Chardonnay. The fun thing at this winery was to talk to the owner, Ron Neal. One of the things that has always been the most fun about wine tasting is getting to talk to the people who make the wine. Ron was one of the very first people to begin planting grapes in the Grand Junction region back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He had been an executive with United Airlines and when he retired, he began making wine full time. The Ptarmigan Winery is an offshoot of his original winery, Stony Mesa and will only sell their wines locally and at the vineyard. Ron told us about the challenges of growing grapes on the high plains surrounding Grand Junction and his love of the area. One thing I found out while doing some web research for this entry is that they run a small online weather network for their vineyards. It shows all of the current weather along with information for the year. Very neat!
 
Next it was on to Whitewater Vineyards; some interesting wines but nothing outstanding. Our next stop was going to be Reeder Mesa Vineyards and we punched in the GPS info and set off. The winery was 8 to 10 miles out a one way road. As we went further and further, the land turned into harsh desert, with very little green for miles. After about 3 miles of this, we decided that this was just not going to be for us since we were looking for painting material for Deb as well as wine and bleak desert wasn't going to be it.
 
After backtracking, we next went to the Carlson Vineyards. The winemaker here is a little eccentric and makes wines with odd names like Laughing Cat, Cougar Run, and T-Red as well as wine from the various fruits that grow in the orchards that surround the vineyard. The only wine that struck us here was an off-dry Reisling. Most of their wines are on the sweet side to tempt the non-wine drinker.
 
As noted at the Carlson vineyard, this area is home to a huge fruit growing operation. When we were there the peach season was in full swing, but Deb's love is apricots. As we were driving around, we came across a sign that said apricots. We slammed on the brakes and pulled into a roadside fruit stand with all sorts of produce for sale in addition to the apricots. When we left we had these as well as fresh vine ripened tomatoes, zucchinis, and a bottle of hot chipotle salsa. The salsa was for a recipe that Deb had found in the aforementioned Sunset Magazine. The recipe was for Santa Fe coleslaw using cabbage, tomatoes, jicama, cilantro, and chipotles in adobo sauce. Since we had been unable to find the chipotles, we figured the salsa would make a good substitute. Deb made up the slaw when we got back from our vineyard hopping and it was FANTASTIC. Naturally, every grocery store we've since gone into has the chipotles in adobo sauce, including Walmart!
 
After Carlson, we went on to St. Kathryn Cellar Winery and Grande River Vineyard. Again, while the wines were okay, nothing bowled us over. After all of these, we had done enough wine tasting and went back to our home-on-wheels where Deb made the coleslaw and I did some catch up on the blog and picture editing.

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