Colorado Drinking

Last weekend saw me celebrate my fortieth birthday and, coincidentally, attend a wedding in Golden, Colorado, a small, very American town outside Denver. My wife and I of course had to explore the burgeoning drinks scene, focusing mainly on Boulder, a well-to-do town at the foot of the Rockies and just under an hour's drive from Denver airport. With Colorado having around 250 breweries, both big (including Coor's) and small, the state is best known for its craft brewing scene. There are also 80 distilleries - up from nine a decade ago - and, perhaps most surprisingly, 150 wineries, meaning that any visitor to Colorado will not go thirsty.

beer

Straight from the airport, we drove to the Prost brewery just outside downtown Denver. As the name suggests (prost means cheers in German), the beers follow German styles and we were lucky enough to arrive in the middle of the brewpub's Oktoberfest, with staff dressed in Lederhosen. There are plenty of choices of regular beers on tap, but we chose a Märzen straight from the keg and served in one-litre steins. This is a beer traditionally made in March (which is what Märzen means in German) with plenty of hops so that it could be served in October after the hot summer months when it was difficult to make good beer. The beer was excellent, malty and lightly hoppy, refreshing and very drinkable at under 6% ABV (✪✪✪✪✪). Even better, the one-litre stein was just $5 - a marked contrast to California where less than half a litre of an IPA is $7. The pub doesn't serve food, but just as we were finishing our first stein a food truck pulled up, serving weighty sandwiches - a different food truck is outside the pub daily.

In the evening, after the wedding we stopped off for a cheeky beer near our AirBnB in downtown Golden. Mountain Toad is a young brewery (again served daily with a food truck), with a vibrant atmosphere. We were a little tipsy by this stage, so I have no idea what the beer we drank was called - but it was very good!

spirits

On Sunday morning, we drove half an hour to Boulder to visit J&L Distilling, which has been going for three and a half years, producing 600 cases a year of vodka, gin, and a liqueur. This was quite an experience. Owner and distiller Seth Johnson is something of a mad scientist, having trained and worked as a physicist before turning his distilling hobby into a career. He's built his own column still, with wires all over the place connecting the still to his computer which can send him text messages when he's not there. This shows his dedication to detail, which runs through every aspect of his business. Unusually, the vodka is made from molasses, which he has shipped from Louisiana, as he feels that they give a creamier, weightier mouthfeel. He also puts the vodka through a high level of rectification to take away the characteristic bite that vodka has. The result is one of the best vodkas I've tried; reminiscent of a rhum agricole, the SNO vodka ($32; ✪✪✪✪✪✪) has a subtle green, underripe banana nose, and that creaminess on the palate balances the alcohol. Johnson also makes a gin with a number of botanicals, placed in separate, layered trays at the bottom of the still, to create an intensely flavoured but very nuanced spirit (also called SNO; $36; ✪✪✪✪✪). FYR ($35; ✪✪✪✪) is a liqueur also based on the vodka, made with a range of herbs and spices, dominated by cinnamon. It's sweet, rich (at 50% ABV), with cinnamon, cloves, and herbal aromas. It's certainly a winter drink, well suited to Colorado's cold, snowy winters.

We also visited another Boulder distillery, Vapor, which is a larger operation. They've been going for ten years (they used to be called Roundhouse but changed the name for legal reasons), building their reputation on gin. They make two gins from about ten botanicals - Rhok ($35-45; ✪✪✪✪) is an unaged gin, a little too sweet for me with not enough juniper, while Ginskey ($50-70; ✪✪✪✪) is a barrel-aged gin which as the name suggests tastes like a whiskey. They've recently expanded to whiskey-making, and are even going to make a single-malt whisky from a huge copper still they've bought from Scotland (it took three and a half years to make, showing the investment that's going into this distillery). Their new Bourbon is good, though a little hot and obvious (✪✪✪).

Both distilleries have tasting rooms where guests can sample the spirits and also drink cocktails, which I think is a great idea. At J&L, we tasted their most popular cocktail, based on the gin infused with beets for a month and it was delicious and tasty. Even better was the take on a mojito, made with the vodka instead of a rum (a natural substitution given the vodka's made from molasses) and basil instead of mint. This was wonderfully refreshing and the basil integrated with the vodka very well. At Vapor, we tried the gin mint gimlet, which was very nice and beautifully presented.

wine

We didn't go to Colorado intending to taste wine, but on the recommendation of Seth at J&L we visited Settembre, a winery also based in Boulder. Colorado's climate makes grape growing difficult, with snowstorms often arriving just as the vines are budding. But the high altitude does lead to a naturally long growing season, which means that there is some potential for the state's wines. The main AVA is Western Slopes, which is 1,700m high, leading to cool nights and good air circulation.

sweet wines still dominate young wine-making states

Settembre is a winery founded ten years ago by former electrical engineer and UC Davis-trained Blake Eliasson, and with small production he is determined to make the most out of Colorado's vineyards. What I particularly liked about the wines we tasted was their age - the wines from the winery's first vintage, 2009, were drinking particularly well. Chardonnay, Riesling, Sangiovese, Syrah, and Cabernet Sauvignon are all made, with a rosé from Cabernet Franc too. The Cabernet Sauvignons we tasted from the 2011 and 2012 vintages were far too green and underripe, suggesting that those cool nights make it difficult to get Cabernet fully ripe. The other wines were uniformly excellent though. The 2011 Chardonnay ($27; ✪✪✪✪✪) had tropical fruits, cinnamon, and a very refreshing acidity given the wine was five years old. The 2011 Sangiovese ($30; ✪✪✪✪) was also still very alive, with smoke, red fruits, spices, and firm tannins, although the 15% ABV was noticeable (the 2010 Sangiovese, which we didn't taste, is 16%!). Also noteworthy was the 2010 Reserve Syrah ($50; ✪✪✪✪), which was juicy, fruity, and spicy, with a balanced, tannic structure.

All the wines were marked with high acidity, making the whites refreshing and the reds ageworthy. Those reds also had firm, gripping tannins - keeping those tannins in check in a climate with such diurnal variation seems to be one of the big challenges for Colorado winemakers.

We were only in the area for two days, yet managed to pack a lot in. I definitely want to return; Denver and its environs are relaxed, easy-going places and, as one would expect from an area where so much drink is being made, there are some great restaurants and up-scale bars (we had Sunday brunch at The Kitchen in Boulder). The drinks scene is young and vibrant and going in very interesting directions - watch the Colorado space.

Crossings

Wine geeks get very excited about clonal selection. "Is the clone Calera, Swan, or 777?" they'll ask when tasting a Pinot Noir, a question that means nothing to the typical drinker. These are clones which have been developed over the years by winemakers and grape growers to suit local conditions, and each clone has different attributes: flavour, acidity, tannins, ripening time. Pinot Noir is a variety which has hundreds of clones as it naturally mutates into different versions of itself; this reproduction is taken further by deliberately crossing different clones together to produce versions of the grape which have specific characteristics.

These clones produced through human interference have also naturally been developed over the centuries and some of the most famous grape varieties are crossings of other varieties. The reason vines grow grapes is to attract birds to eat them and spread the seeds elsewhere to propagate more vines. As these seeds are spread, they meet and reproduce with seeds from other varieties of grapes, which is why the exhaustive Wine Grapes book lists over 1,300 different grape varieties.

Bordeaux grapes

One of the most famous natural crossings is Cabernet Sauvignon. Originating from Bordeaux, its parents are two other grapes native to the region, Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. Given the shared name, it seems obvious that these two grapes together produced Cabernet Sauvignon but its distinct character confused people for some time - Cabernet Sauvignon has thick skins, is late ripening, and produces wines with deep blackcurrant aromas, while Cabernet Franc ripens earlier and its wines have more red fruits and Sauvignon Blanc is a white grape. However, DNA testing in the 1990s definitively proved the heritage of Cabernet Sauvignon, a heritage one can identify through the green, herbaceous aromas sometimes found in Cabernet Sauvignon and often found in both Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc.

Meanwhile, the other great Bordeaux grape, Merlot, is also a crossing, again of Cabernet Franc and an obscure, barely planted variety called Magdeleine Noire des Charentes which wasn't even given a name until the 1990s when it was found growing outside some villagers' houses.

Along with a now rarely-grown Bordeaux variety called Gros Cabernet, Cabernet Franc is also the parent grape of Carmenère, which is now mostly found in Chile. Cabernet Franc plays a vital if sometimes overlooked part in Bordeaux blends, adding colour, acidity, and aromas of red fruits and pencil shavings. As the parent grape of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, as well as Carmenère, it's perhaps entitled to call itself the most important Bordeaux grape.

Chardonnay, Aligoté, and Gamay

Crossings have been formed from both natural and human interference. Both can be unpredictable, but it's the natural evolution which can be the most surprising yet effective. Pinot Noir is one of the most promiscuous grapes, reproducing to create Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc. In Burgundy, the grape has mutated, either naturally or through cutting the best vines and planting them in a new vineyard, and this is one of the reasons the villages and vineyards of Burgundy produce such diverse wines.

This has not only led to it creating different versions of itself, but also completely different grape varieties. On three separate occasions, it has procreated with the same variety - Gouais Blanc, an otherwise forgettable white grape - to produce three different off-spring all now grown in Burgundy: Chardonnay, Aligoté, and Gamay. I remember being told this in a class, and a student shouted out, "But that's impossible! How can they produce such different varieties?" The instructor likened it to having children: one couple might have three children that can be hard to tell apart, another couple might have three children remarkably dissimilar, say with dark hair, fair hair, and red hair. So it was with Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc.

Müller-Thurgau and Scheurebe

That's how nature works, now back to the humans. Riesling is one of the most difficult grapes to grow, a late-ripening variety that only produces complex wines in a cool climate and on difficult stony soils. In the late 19th century and early 20th, German scientists attempted to create crossings that replicated the complexity of Riesling, but ripened much earlier to make life easier on growers. One of the crossings created was by a Dr. Müller, who hailed from the Swiss canton of Thurgau. He thought he was crossing Riesling with another quality German variety, Silvaner, but that other variety was in actual fact Madeleine-Royal, about which there is otherwise little of interest to say. In the 1960s, Müller-Thurgau began to dominate plantings as Germany recovered from the Second World War. It was easy and cheap to grow, its rise was unstoppable, and it so badly damaged Germany's reputation as the heart of once-fashionable wines such as Blue Nun and Black Tower. Since the 1990s, there has been a concerted effort to reduce plantings, but it's still the second-most planted variety in Germany, with 11,000ha of the country's 100,000ha of vines.

Another variety that was once thought to be a Riesling-Silvaner crossing is Scheurebe, created by a Dr. Scheu (Rebe means vine in German). It has grassy, grapefruit aromas, and its high acidity makes it ideal for good-quality sweet wine. Despite its quality, there's not much planted in Germany (just over 2,000ha) as it just doesn't produce wines as classy as Riesling, but there are some dry and sweet wines made from it (try Pfeffingen's dry Scheurebe from Pfalz). In 2012, it was finally discovered what the crossing was: Riesling and a variety I have never heard of called Buckettsrebe.

other notable crossings

One of my favourite crossings is Zweigelt, a fruity, often easy-drinking, yet tannic red that a customer once admitted to me she was addicted to. It's Austria's most planted black grape, and is a crossing of the country's two highest-quality black varieties, Blaufränkisch and St-Laurent. Its name comes from Dr. Zweigelt, who crossed the grapes in 1922. Hans Igler produces an extraordinarily good value Zweigelt from Burgenland.

Another less successful crossing is Pinotage, although South Africans would dispute that claim. The wines are often full of chocolate aromas, with a weird rubberiness. Despite that, it's become South Africa's national grape as it's barely grown elsewhere. Wines are getting much better as winemakers learn to deal with the grape (check out Rijk's). It was developed by South African I. A. Perold in 1925, a random crossing of Pinot Noir and the Rhône grape Cinsault. Both of these varieties are known for their red fruit characteristics, yet Pinotage has big, bold, overripe black fruit aromas. Such is the unpredictability of crossings ....