Mostly Pictures

Wine is made everywhere, including Paonia. We went on a tour of two local wineries though, according to a Colorado Wine Country brochure, we could have toured dozens.

Below is the tasting cottage for Stone Cottage Winery which is situated, conveniently, directly below the other other winery we visited. (We went to a third tasting room as well, but it turned not have its own wine.) You can see the vines, behind the fence on the lower left of the picture.



Stone Cottage Cellars has been in business for about three years, having inherited mature vines from a larger company that was trying to save money by growing grapes in less well known regions. The new owners kept some older vines, but replaced others.

The stone faced buildings are new. M's father-in-law bulldozed the building foundations and the new owners built the structures. Adding stones to the buildings is laborious, and here you can see the construction.



This is the cellar where the wine is kept, which contains barrels, a large stainless steel tank, and bottling equipment.



The Syrah tasted better than a 90 point wine we tried a couple of weeks before we left on this trip. It was seriously good. W liked the Chardonnay and, after ignoring the bizarre stinky cheese smell to take a sip, I also liked the Alpine Dessert wine.



Before visiting the Stone Cottage winery we stopped at the oldest, and highest altitude, winery in the area, the Terror Creek Winery. The woman who runs the winery, now with her son, opened the winery in 1993, well before other local vintners.

We giggled a bit about the sign. It's unclear where the owners grew up, but they went to Switzerland to learn Alsatian (German) wine-making techniques. "Visiteurs" is French.



We bought a bottle of the Gewurztraminer, which was more dry and crisp than other Gewurztraminers we've tried. It went well with dinner and M tried a sip, though he prefers beer.

On the left, below, is a copy of the brochure for the winery and, on the right, is a picture I took from inside the tasting room looking out. The perspective is almost the same, though the colors are more saturated in the brochure. Also, there are more buildings now and the shrubs are different.