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 Vintner’s Choice Colorado Wine Club are:

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?

2005 Chardonnay, Two Rivers Winery

This classic wine exhibits very good color, flavor and balance.  It’s a gold medal winner at both the 2006 Wine Fest Competition in Palisade as well as at the 2006 Denver International Wine Competition.  We’re getting a fair amount of smooth complexity, indicating it probably went through malolactic fermentation as well as a sur lies program of stirring the yeast lees periodically through the year of barrel aging in a mix of new and used oak.  Try it with salmon prepared any way you like – it’ll be a great match.

As always, enjoy the wines in good health!

Sincerely,

Glenn & Natalie Foster