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Put Some Altitude in Your Glass
34: Jayme Henderson & Steve Steese: The Storm Cellar Winery
Apr 12, 2022
34: Jayme Henderson & Steve Steese: The Storm Cellar Winery
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
0:00
[upbeat music] You're listening to Denver Wine Radio, the podcast about Colorado wine. My name is Paul Bonacorsi.
0:10
I'm the winemaker at Bonacorsi Wine Company, an urban winery I launched back in 2006 in Denver, Colorado, where I've been making and learning about wine ever since.
0:20
I'm sitting down with other wineries and wine experts to find out what makes Colorado wine so unique, and to help you find the wines you like to drink. And now, let's put some altitude in your glass.
0:35
The Storm Cellar is a collaborative vision between Steve Steese and Jamie Henderson.
0:40
They spent many years as sommeliers in the Denver restaurant scene, and decided to purchase a vineyard property and move to Colorado's Western Slope.
0:49
They'll tell you, The Storm Cellar is a project founded upon a love of Colorado, a desire to make great wine in this great state, and a goal of helping to put a relatively unknown yet up-and-coming region on the national map.
1:02
And in their short time of launching their winery, they've done just that. Steve and Jamie stopped by the winery after the Governor's Cup Tasting back in November, where they won a double gold for their Rose of St.
1:13
Vincent. And now, here's Steve and Jamie. Well, how's it going? It's great. We're good. Good to see you. Good to see you, too. Wow, last night was, um, what a fantastic event. It was a lot of fun.
1:28
It was the first time that we'd been around that many people in a long time [laughs]. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
1:34
Yeah, our tasting room situations are pretty intimate, so to have over 500 people in the room was, uh- Exhilarating [laughs] Yeah Yep... it was fun. [laughs] Yeah.
1:42
We couldn't wind down till, like, 1:00 AM, so it still feels like morning to us. Yeah, we were keyed up all night. [laughs] Yeah. Over-caffeinated, that probably was part of the problem. So, and- Yep...
1:50
and congratulations, by the way. It was- Oh, thank you... yeah, double gold with your s- uh, Rose of St. Vincent. That's right. Yes. So let's start from the beginning. Just tell me your story.
1:59
I mean, how did it all start? [laughs] Uh, we can try to keep it succinct for you. Yeah. It's multi-faceted, but, um- Yeah...
2:07
Steve and I were both on the Front Range as wine buyers, as sommeliers, beverage directors, uh, for about over 15 years. And in 2016, we were out at a winery, uh, Peter Michael Winery, with Sir Peter Michael.
2:21
We were at a table on a wine buying trip for the restaurant, and he asked us, you know, "Tell me about Colorado wine." And neither of us had an adequate answer.
2:29
We could name maybe three wineries, and so we decided to set out on a quest, and that was, you know, May 2016.
2:37
Uh, the next week, Steve was working at the restaurant and did an internet search and looked at Colorado vineyards for sale. We were not even in the market.
2:45
It was kind of a crazy thing to Google, but we ended up making a road trip out to the Western Slope, to the West Elks. And long story short, we wrote a business plan from seeing this particular vineyard site.
2:57
Weren't able to put an offer on the property for, like, six months, and we're just nail biting that someone else wouldn't put an offer.
3:04
And there, yeah, so 2017, moved out, hit the ground running in March and pruned vines. Uh, sold grapes our first year, and made wine, and 2018 was our first vintage. Wow. So big, big 180.
3:15
[laughs] So how many, how many acres of grapes were there on... So you bought an existing vineyard, and how, how big was it? Sure, existing vineyard.
3:22
The, the, uh, the vineyards, the, the whole property's almost 90 acres. The vineyard space- Wow...
3:27
within that property, uh, there's a fence line that encloses a space that's about 23 acres, of which we've got maybe 10 up and running currently. Yeah.
3:35
The goal is to get all 23 acres up and running within the next five years. Five years. [laughs] The goal, I'd say five years.
3:43
You know, if we can get 23 acres running, and we're pulling in two tons an acre, and we're bringing in 50 tons of fruit off our own vineyard, that's pretty close to the model for our project that we're trying to hit.
3:53
Yeah, want to capitalize that. Yeah. Oh, good. And you, and you only do white and rose. That's it. That's right. That's it. That's it. We, we don't ever say never. We're open.
4:01
Um- And when, when I bear- [laughs] And then I'll just say this, when I first heard of your winery and I thought, "You're only doing whites and roses. What are they, crazy?"
4:09
You know, I just- Oh, but- I mean, that's the- Right... that's the thinking, and may- and that's wr- obviously wrong. [laughs] I know.
4:14
I mean, when, when we first bought that property, there's, you know, seven acres of Riesling there, and, oh, half a dozen Colorado winemakers were like, "That's a lot of Riesling.
4:21
You're never gonna be able to sell all that Riesling." And- Were they like, "What are you gonna do with it?"... Jamie and I were like, "Oh, game on." [laughs] I know. [laughs] See? Yeah.
4:29
That is the best, when somebody tells you you can't do it. Yes. And you gotta go, you gotta show 'em up. Yeah, it kind of fires you up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, watch, w- we'll make it work.
4:36
[laughs] Challenge accepted. Definitely. So, so what has been the challenges? Oh, my. Multitudes of challenge. You know, it's an own rooted vineyard, just like the rest of Colorado.
4:46
We discovered phylloxera in the vineyard shortly after purchasing it that first spring, and it has ravaged the vineyard. Mm.
4:54
It moves so much faster than you think, and then it's been multiplied by two really crippling Octobers in a row. So vineyard rehab has been a big project, for sure. Yeah.
5:04
Obviously with phylloxera, we've been replanting with grafted vines pretty much nonstop ever since then. Mm-hmm. But, you know, people ask, "What's the har- [laughs] what's the hardest part? Is it farming?
5:13
Is it wine-making?" We joke that being a, a new small business owner is every bit as difficult as that. The paperwork- [laughs] All the documents... the permits, the documents- Yeah... all that, the government.
5:24
I mean, as soon as you- Bookkeeping... tell the government you're working with alcohol, you know they are into what you're doing. They want into your business, and man, it's- Yeah...
5:32
you just gotta keep up with all that stuff, and it's so hard when you're trying to run a farm, trying to run a tasting room, and manage all that stuff. It's a lot. And, and we live right there where it's all happening.
5:41
People have to drive past, you know, our, our house, and so there's no- Yeah... separation of, of home life and business life. That has been the biggest challenge for me personally, is just finding a respite, you know?
5:52
Yeah. And government being all up in your business, a couple of months ago, I had a state inspection here, so he gave me a list of things I need to do. [laughs] [laughs] On top of everything else, right? You know. Yeah.
6:05
So that, that's just how it goes, but... So you, did you just teach yourself viticulture, I mean, to grow grapes? [laughs]You know- Or did you just get out there and, you know...
6:14
there, there was, I'll say this, there was a lot of crowdsourcing. So we had done, you know, internships at various wineries, helped with harvest, and of course, that doesn't give you the full spectrum by any means.
6:25
And the crazy part that I like to say is, you know, Steve and I, we, we gardened in Denver, we gardened a city block, tore it up. We had 42 tomato plants, proud of that. Sure. A bunch of peppers.
6:34
And we're like, "You know what? We can, we can scale this up a little." [laughs] And so that is the insane part. We're just like, "If we're meticulous, if we can work with the season, we can learn this."
6:43
And I think if you over- if we had over-thought it, looking back, I'm just like, maybe it was a wild, really overwhelming decision to make.
6:50
But, uh, the wine-making too, you know, we had done some internship making wine, and you just see the process, these little segments. Mm-hmm. And so there was a lot of learning on the fly.
7:00
There are a lot of stories where it was just like, okay, turning the valves on and opening them when you have your press, and there's three, four tons of fruit inside, you need to have those valves open.
7:10
[laughs] And midway through a press cycle, when you see a little stream of juice coming out the top port hole and you realize that the pressure's building, that happened. That was our first press. Oh, man.
7:18
And, um, a lot of stories like that. We never made that mistake again. We always look and make sure those valves are open. So- Yeah, a sharp learning curve- Yeah... for sure. Yeah.
7:26
People, people think it's an easy transition, "Oh, you're a sommelier, and now you're a wine maker. That, that makes sense." No. But in a lot of ways, it totally doesn't make sense at all.
7:34
Somms is all technical knowledge.
7:37
We had a lot of book knowledge and facts and information, but putting that technical knowledge into practical use, you know, you buy a vineyard that's 30 years old, and, you know, the irrigation was, system was put in 30 years ago, it's all underground.
7:49
Like, where does it actually go? What's hap- those kinds of things. Yeah. Mm-hmm. What is going on here? You know, I've got a 30-year-old Italian press and a brand-new Japanese pump, and I live in the middle of nowhere.
7:59
How do we physically hook these things together? People don't realize that when you're in a place like California, that it's not just that grapes wanna grow there.
8:06
There's 100 different support industries for the wine industry that we have no access to. There's no parts, there's no service, there's no tech support for any of those things.
8:15
Every product we need, we have to ship in from the Western Slope, I mean, Western Coast, not Slope. Um, so- To an isolated town... yeah, it's a small town. It's barely 1,000 people.
8:24
It's a very rural town, but we were so intrigued by the idea of farming and growing grapes at this property. At 6,000 feet, it's, it is the fringe of where grape-growing is humanly possible.
8:36
And does unique make a better wine? Maybe not, but unique does tell a story, and story's such a part of the wine experience, so. Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely.
8:46
And your story is, is success, I think, from start to, I mean, in a near short amount of time. Of course, you were in the Governor's Cup case this year. We didn't have one last year, but two years ago. Yeah.
8:58
And I think prior to that, you had, didn't you have wine? That was our first release. That was your first- Yeah... your first release. Mm-hmm. You had a wine in the Governor's Cup. Which was- Two... crazy.
9:08
Yeah, two, I think. Two. Two. Yeah. And those were our Rieslings. Um, I mean, that was, it definitely helped, our, with our motivation, like hey, we're doing something right. Yeah.
9:16
There's always room for improvement, but that was pretty wild, yeah. Yeah. And your somm skills, come on, when you go, when it comes down to putting the blend together and- Putting the blend together...
9:26
the finished product- Yes... I mean, that, that is, it's absolutely neces- It helps... it helps, it's necessary... a lot of practice and tasting- Yeah, yes...
9:32
and it's just like, it's like building a well-balanced cocktail, you know? Mm-hmm. It, it's, it's a lot, that's our, one of our favorite parts is the blending s- uh, session, you know, in the winter, which is coming up.
9:41
We're in blending season coming up. [laughs] That's exciting. Yeah. So. People ask all the time, you know, "How'd, how'd you do this? How'd you come out of the gate so hard?"
9:48
And even us, we ask each other that sometimes, like, what is it we're doing? You know, what is the secret ingredient?
9:55
And I think you hit it, is just that, you know, years as somms, we tasted the greatest wines from all over the world at the restaurants we were at for years and years.
10:02
And so we went into this with a pretty clear picture of what it was we were trying to create. You know, when you st- when you start a business, you, you have to kind of make a decision.
10:12
Am I going to try and find a guest and see what kind of wine they like and make a wine for that guest, or are we gonna try and make the wines that we wanna make and then go find the guest that likes those wines?
10:24
And either one of those- Exactly... is a vio- viable option, you know, but we were like, "Why don't we just make the wines we wanna drink? Somebody else has gotta wanna drink those kinds of wines, too." So- Yeah...
10:34
um, in general, our style's really clean, lighter, not as heavy as extracted and exhausting as a lot of other wines seem to be. We, we love to taste wines.
10:44
We, I mean, we wrote the wine list at one of the greatest steakhouses in the United States.
10:47
We tasted the greatest Cabernets in the world night after night, and we still love to taste those wines, but, uh, that's not necessarily what I, I like to drink. And I like- Sure... to drink wine.
10:56
I want something that's invigorating and not gonna- Lively... put me to sleep, lively, not so extracted and gigantic and yeah, so. That's awesome.
11:05
Well, I wanna be respectful of your time, [laughs] so, but, uh, thanks for, thanks for popping in the studio today. Oh, thanks, Paul. Well, thank you, too.
11:13
We're excited to take some of your wine home and, uh, replenish our collection and get after some good reds. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. It'll be perfect for these upcoming months. Yes. I can't wait. Coast months.
11:21
[laughs] That's our show for this week. Thank you so much for listening to Denver Wine Radio. Your homework for the week is to go out and taste some Colorado wine.
11:33
If you have any questions or comments or just wanna let us know what you're drinking, go to denverwineradio.com, where you can email us or leave us a voice message. We'd love to hear from you.
11:44
And remember, put some altitude in your glass. Produced and distributed by the Sound Off Media company.
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