Dear Colorado Wine Club Member,

The grape growing season has begun!  There are a few varieties in certain locations that have turned over a new leaf, so to speak.  It will be just fine with us if Jack Frost has retired for about 6 months.  It’s really exciting to watch this valley bursting with flowers and foliage.  At the same time, it seems to be bursting economically as well.  It’s common knowledge that we have a borderline severe labor shortage in this part of the country.  It’s due almost entirely to the burgeoning energy industry.  We have many kinds of energy exploration and extraction in this region, and this requires workers.  Energy companies typically pay very well for this kind of work.  It may force grape growers to find other sources of labor.  Hopefully this won’t cost us any limbs or major organs.

Enclosed are your Wine Club bottles.  This month’s wines for the Sweet Colorado Wine Club are:

2005 Ptarmigan Muscat, Stoney Mesa Winery

This unusual dessert wine is superbly crafted to perform extreme acts of pleasure in your mouth.  It has pronounced Muscat varietal character, honey, pear and citrus.  The grapes were somewhat infected with botrytis, aka “Noble Rot”, which is a highly desirable natural occurrence giving the wine an extra measure of floral quality in the aroma.  The wine won a silver medal in the recent all women’s wine tasting, as well as “Colorado dessert wine of the year” by Vine Magazine.  Winemaker Bret Neal says he can sit around and enjoy a glass of this wine for 20 minutes just smelling it.  Yup, we like it a lot too.  Can you tell?

Raspberry Dessert, Mountain Spirit Winery

This delicious dessert fruit wine has a lot going for it.  First, it tastes like the fruit it was made from – that’s saying more than it sounds like.  Many fruit wines lose the essence of the main ingredient because it is volatile and floats away during fermentation.  This wine is also not very syrupy.  It has enough acid to balance the residual sugar, yet it still tastes sweet enough to call it a dessert wine.  This one would be fabulous with a spinach salad with mandarin oranges, almond slices and warm goat cheese drizzled with maple glaze.

As always, enjoy the wines in good health!

Sincerely,

Glenn & Natalie Foster