A Winery’s Best PR Star

In most places, a dog is a dog but in a California vineyard, you might as well spell dog backward. A good vineyard dog oversees all public relations. She (or he) greets and announces visitors. She attends wine tastings, pre-sampling the baguettes for freshness. A vineyard dog is faithfully dusty from stalking mice, owls, wild turkeys, rabbits, and deer in the vineyard. Ever the connoisseur, she joins the vineyard crew for lunch, helping in the consumption of burritos con pollo and tacos al pastor. Above all, a good vineyard dog knows (this is true) when the grapes are ripe and will nibble a cluster right off the vine when the time is right.

Where are the highest vineyards in the U.S.?

A. California

B. Arizona

C. Washington State

D. Colorado

Colorado’s 125 wineries are mostly nestled in high-elevation river valleys and on mesas—many of which are at elevations of 4,000 to 7,000 feet above sea level, making the Rocky Mountain state’s vineyards the highest in the U.S. Colorado’s vineyards are also considered some of the highest in the world. At such elevations, nights are cold, but during summer, days are warm, dry, and sunny.

“It’s hard to talk about flavor. Tasting something is such a direct neural jolt; words will always seem clumsy and vague. ‘Spicy’ does not begin to express the riot of electrical fires sparking through your skull after you eat a Thai chile. ‘Sour’ hardly touches the way a fresh lemon grips your whole consciousness and squeezes until it weeps.

So we turn to metaphor. Elderflower kombucha is a bottled Scandinavian summer: mild, light, yellow, easy. Coconut water is a Caribbean afternoon. Chianti, as any sommelier will tell you, is the blood of a mortally wounded Vespa. … Coca-Cola is all the gallons of lighter fluid harvested from discarded Bics in the aftermath of a Bruce Springsteen concert.”

—René Redzepi and David Zilber in The Noma Guide to Fermentation (Artisan 2018)

A Winery’s Best PR Star

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