Is it time for wine to shine in Fort Collins?
Hello, Coloradoan subscribers.
Reporter Erin Udell here.
Let’s play a little Fort Collins trivia. Did you know that in 1994 — as Fort Collins' craft brewery scene was growing and Odell Brewing Co. was constructing its behemoth brewery on East Lincoln Avenue — the city’s first winery opened just a mile away?
Tucked into a small strip also off of Lincoln Avenue, Shadow Mountain Cellars marked a beginning for Fort Collins’ wine scene. But where beer bubbled, wine stumbled. A little more than five years after opening, Shadow Mountain Cellars ceased its wine-making operations and eventually shuttered. Since then, Fort Collins’ winery scene has been marked with starts and stops. Today, the city has nearly 30 breweries but only two wineries — one of which was opened two years ago by, you guessed it, a brewery.
But as Northern Colorado grows, some winemakers are hoping to capitalize on a changing Choice City and elevate the image of Colorado wine in the process. Odell’s OBC Wine Project recently celebrated a year at its Fort Collins wine taproom. West Fort Collins’ Blendings at Hillside Vineyard recently opened a small grab-and-go tasting room space at The Exchange in Old Town. And not to be outdone, Denver’s Blanchard Family Wines is poised to open a tasting room in the downtown open-air plaza later this summer.
After seeing Denver’s wine scene explode over the past decade, Blanchard Family Wines co-founder James Blanchard is convinced Fort Collins is next.
“The market is ready for it. The demographic is right. The people are right,” he recently told me.
So, after years in beer’s big shadow, is it finally time for wine to shine in Fort Collins?
Taking on that question has proved tough without a crystal ball, but go on the journey with me as I trace beer’s decades-long stronghold in Fort Collins and wine’s scrappy underdog status in my latest look at the city’s food and drink scene.
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— Erin Udell, erinudell@coloradoan.com
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Is it time for wine to shine in Fort Collins?
