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Put Some Altitude in Your Glass
13: Meet Kyle Schlachter from the Colorado Wine Board
Apr 20, 2018
13: Meet Kyle Schlachter from the Colorado Wine Board
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
0:00
Yo, mic check one two, one two. We in the house. Yeah.
0:13
[upbeat music] Denver Wine Radio with Paul Bonacquisti and Cha Cha Chavez. Presented by Bonacquisti Wine Company and Cha's Back in the Day Cafe. Son of a gun, it's 12:01 in the Mile High City.
0:30
We're on like Donkey Kong. [laughs] God, I haven't heard that in years. That's a tribute to our friend JoJo. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. How are you? Good morning, Paul. Morning, Cha. No, good afternoon.
0:43
Welcome to Denver Wine Radio. What a great day in the Mile High City. Got a- It's a, it's a little breezy... it is a little breezy, but, um, you know, Saturdays at noon, made for wine tasting. Absolutely.
0:54
And that's what it's all about. We're gonna uncork it. We are gonna uncork it. Uh, today on the show we're gonna do Chardonnay. Okay.
1:02
And our special guest in studio is Kyle Schlachter from the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board. How's it going, Kyle? Doing well. How are you doing, Paul? Thanks for having me. Uh, you're- Good morning, Kyle.
1:11
[doorbell rings] Good morning. Glad to have you here. Wow. [laughs] Hey. [laughs] Oh, you guys sound effects and everything. [laughs] How come I didn't get a, a, a ding-dong? [doorbell rings] Thank you. Love it.
1:22
Thank you. [coughs] No problem. Hey, so, uh, Kyle's the, uh, outreach coordinator for the Colorado Wine Board, and, uh, does a lot of great work over there. And also, he's on the Littleton City Council. Right on.
1:34
Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. And, uh, he, uh, he has a wine blog called Colorado Wine Press. Writes about wine. He's, he's really, uh, kickass, if I can say that. Yeah, it's a little neglected right now.
1:44
I haven't been writing as much as I used to, but, uh, it's fun. You're, you look really, really young to have, like- I'm a lot older than I look... all this experience in drinking the vino, dude. I, I got started early.
1:54
[laughs] Real- And you're a bottle? [laughs] Yeah. Well, yeah. [laughs] Yeah, and then, uh, and- Nice [coughs]... and of course- Bring it up...
1:59
check it out, he, he was, uh, in, featured in Wine Enthusiast Magazine- Ooh... as a- That's a big one right there... 40, 40 Under 40- Dude, that's-... taster for- Yeah, that was fun. That was, I was surprised about that.
2:10
I was, uh- That's the Rolling Stone of wine. It is. It is, really, yeah. Yeah, it is. That's the Rolling Stone of wine. Yeah, yeah. Congratulations. That's awesome. Thank you very much. Yeah, it was fun. That's awesome.
2:17
Last year went out to, to San Francisco and had a photo shoot. There were a bunch of other people out there. Wow. So that was fun. See? Big time now. Oh, yeah. Photo shoots and everything, Paulie. That's awesome.
2:26
I'm kind of a big deal. [laughs] [laughs] Yeah, I love it. [laughs] Our producer's on fire today. Yeah. That was good. That was good. With the drops. I loved that. [coughs] That was funny.
2:39
Yeah, so, um, yeah, tell, yeah, so talk about 40 Under 40. That, that's really a, that's a really cool thing, and how'd that come about? Uh, that, it just, uh, I got nominated. Did you get nominated or what?
2:49
Yeah, I got nominated.
2:50
I think, uh, the produc- or the editors, uh, for Wine Enthusiast sit down, they get a big meeting, and they kinda go through, every year they have a 40 Under 40, uh, issue, and they try to find younger people in the wine industry.
3:01
And I worked with a couple of the writers, a couple of the editors a year back on an article about Colorado, and they put my name forward and they said, "Hey, you're, you're, you're out there promoting a underappreciated wine region."
3:13
And they said- Absolutely... "We really like what you're doing," and they, they put me in that. I was quite surprised. That's awesome. When I got the email I thought it was a, uh, a scam. Oh, you did?
3:19
[laughs] I'm like, "Oh, no, th- this isn't, this isn't right. What, someone's trying to trick me here." Right. But, um, no, yeah, it was fun. I was, it's- So tell us a little bit about-... quite the honor... yourself.
3:27
How did you get into this? Are you from Colorado? No, I'm originally from Wisconsin. Okay. I came out here about 20 years ago to college, and, uh, uh, my background's in geography.
3:35
But in college I, uh, started tasting some wine, and I, I, it just blew me away how connected wine is to geography, how you can have a- Okay. You, you need to explain that one, Lucy...
3:45
so there's, there's different ways to explain that, explain that, is you take the same grape. You take Chardonnay. Mm-hmm. Today we have, uh, a, a whole bunch of different Chardonnays on the table.
3:52
All the same grape, but they're gonna taste wildly different just based on the place they're grown. Right on.
3:59
And you can have two Chardonnays right next to each other and taste wildly different, just because the soils are different- Mm-hmm... just because, uh, the water is a little bit different there. Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
4:08
So it, it just, just fascinating. And then you get to see different regions in the world that produce different grapes.
4:14
So they're, they're, if, if you go to France, all the regions in France are based on the types of grapes they grow there. And so you go from Bordeaux to Burgundy to Loire Valley, and it's, it's based on the grape.
4:25
So the geography, I really like to think of wine as geography in a bottle. Okay. Yep. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That's... Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Geography in a bottle. I like that. So, yeah. So, yeah.
4:34
Yeah, so I just explored, uh, explored geography through, through wine. Right on. That's a- Well, what country are we going to today? [laughs] Well, we're gonna start here in Colorado. All right. Let's go.
4:45
'Cause, um, we've got a couple, uh, couple of Chardonnays from the Western Slope. We brought in, um, Two Rivers Chardonnay, and, uh, also brought in Plum Creek Chardonnay. Okay.
4:56
And, uh, both of th- those are two wineries that have been, been around a long time in, in Colorado. Yeah. And Chardonnay is a little sweeter? Is it a little sweeter wine? It tends to be drier. Drier? Yeah.
5:05
It depends on the style. Yeah. Um, Char- there's, Chardonnay is a big spectrum of styles.
5:09
You can have real light, uh, almost steely acidic Chardonnays, or you can have, in California oftentimes you have these big, rich, buttery Chardonnays. Oh. Mm-hmm. Mm.
5:20
Yeah, and then hotter, you know, hotter climate, warmer climates can- Right... drive more tropical fruit profiles to them.
5:26
Cooler climates you'll have more crisp, uh, acidity and, and, uh, more citrusy type, type profiles, so. Yeah, you'll taste anything from green apples to pears to coconut. Coconuts? Coconut, yeah. What?
5:39
That, that's the effect of, uh, o- oak barrels. And let me tell you- Really? Coconuts. Yeah, coconut. Mm-hmm. Huh. So, um, so Chardonnay- I think that-...
5:47
let me just tell you, is, uh, is probably the top planted grape in the world, don't you think? Or- It's up there, yeah. It's up there. It's up there. It's in the top couple, two or three.
5:56
And, and, uh, so I, when I was out shopping for, uh, Chardonnay last night, um, just the c- just the, there was a Chardonnay section. I went over to Molly's, and, um, I was just in the, the, it was basically California.
6:10
They probably had, I don't know, 75 to 100 different California Chardonnays. Wow.
6:16
And, um, then I went over to the Burgundy section, uh, to grab the, uh, French, uh, Chardonnay that we're gonna try, and I didn't even touch... Uh, of course, I- I grabbed the two, uh, Colorado wines there as well.
6:28
But, uh, I didn't even touch on, like, Australia, any of the other regions around the world. So there's- Wow. So you can easily get overwhelmed with, uh, look- trying to just pick out a Chardonnay.
6:37
Yeah, there's, there's Chardonnay planted pretty much in every wine region in the world. Wow. Yeah. Interesting. And it, and it grows really well here in Colorado.
6:44
It's, uh, been around as probably what the top, uh, two- It's the top white Oh, it is the top white in Colorado. Yeah.
6:49
It goes back and forth between, uh, you got, uh, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, uh, Riesling and Chardonnay go back and forth. But, uh, yeah, it's one of the, one of the top, uh, three or four grapes planted in Colorado.
7:02
Well, I'm anxious to taste. [laughs] Oh, well then, uh, that's my cue, I guess, to open up a bottle of wine. So, um, we should probably start. Uh,
7:11
I don't, I don't really have a clue today, but, um, I'm gonna start with one of the twisties, okay? [laughs] That's, that's easy, yeah. That'll save us some time.
7:19
And, uh, so I'm starting with the Two Rivers, uh, Chardonnay. This is, um, uh, 2015 Mesa County. So, um, Mesa County would be- Thank you... the, uh, county that, uh, i- is, uh, Palisade, right?
7:36
Yeah, Palisade, Grand Junction are all in Me- uh, Mesa County. Okay. And so when you look at a wine label, um, it usually says where the grapes were grown, and in this case it says Mesa County.
7:46
You can look at, you can look at the country. It can say American. It can go to the state. It could say Colorado.
7:52
You could go down to the county, or you can keep getting more specific, down into what we call the Appalachian or the American Viticultural Area. And we have two of those in Colorado. One's called the Grand Valley AVA.
8:02
Where's that? That's over, uh, around Grand Junction, Palisade. Okay. And then there's the West Elks AVA, and that's kind of, uh, by Hotchkiss and Paonia, about, mm, hour, 90 minutes southeast of Grand Junction. Huh.
8:15
Yeah. I have to pack up the RV and go to these places. [laughs] Seriously, Paulie. You should. I have to tell you about, yeah, my friend bought an RV. Oh. Oh, yeah. I gotta hear about that.
8:24
I'm get- we're getting it ready for the road trip. [laughs] We could do a wine tasting RV party. [laughs] All right, so- You know, it's- What's the first thing you smell, Chaw?
8:33
The first thing I smell is, like, fruity, like a, some kind of a fruit, like a peachy almost kinda. Yeah, I get some peach. You got some, uh, apricot. I get a little almost baked apples. Yeah, I get- Some apple pie.
8:47
Yeah. Yeah, totally. Let me see. Ooh, that's ni- that's nice. Very smooth. That's not me, everybody. [laughs] They're making sounds.
9:04
[laughs] How many, how many people- He's swishing... how many people have heard their friends or, or, uh, your parents make a noise like that when they're drinking wine? Have you ever heard that before? Mm-mm, never.
9:14
I was like- Chaw-... "Uh, what are you doing over there? It's like swishing or what?" [laughs] Please excuse yourself.
9:19
[laughs] So that's to bring oxygen into your mouth, and it, it adds the flavors, uh, as you taste it, so you do that. Oh, and what were you doing? Basically just breathing in. Sometimes that helps. So there's real- no.
9:33
[laughs] Don't sp- now you don't spit that wine out- I did spit it out. No, I'm not... on that microphone. [laughs] So- This is very good. I like this. Very good. Yeah.
9:44
There's no real, uh, you know, there's no wrong way or right way. Mm-mm. I mean, but if you wanna- It's really good... agitate it in your mouth, uh, suck a little air in. Mm-hmm.
9:51
You know, and that helps you release some more flavors in your mouth, yeah, go for it. Oh, it's really good. That's how he does it. All right.
9:57
I, this with a really good, like, fish, like salmon or something would be- Oh, that'd be good... I'd pair that up with that. Yeah. Chicken fajitas. Oh, are you- Always... the chicken fajitas? That's what I go, I go to.
10:07
[laughs] Okay. So. Chicken fajitas. Okay. All right. We're tasting- Right on...
10:09
Chardonnay today on Denver Wine Radio, and when we come back, we're gonna, we're gonna dive into some more wine and, um, see what else Chaw tastes. Yeah. You're listening to Denver Wine Radio on Mile High Sports.
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