FANCY A WEEKEND BREAK WITH A DIFFERENCE?

Here’s an idea for those of you who like to do something totally mad just once in a while. Go to the Colorado Mountain Winefest. Put the third weekend of September in your diary now!

Here’s what you do: Get yourself on a plane to Denver on the Thursday. [There IS a non-stop flight from London; if you’re happy with only 31” of leg-room for ten hours, take it. Me, I’d rather fly with Another Airline that offers a massive 35” – even in the back of the plane – and stops somewhere en route to give you a break and a chance to adjust to the time difference.] Then rent a car, hit Interstate Highway 70 heading west, and book into an hotel somewhere without driving too far the first night. [NB: Being in the Mile High City does not automatically qualify you for membership of the Mile High Club – you have to do the necessary at least a mile above ground level to qualify!] Get up at crack of dawn (you won’t be able to sleep anymore, anyway - your body-clock will be seven hours fast). Go to a diner and stoke up on steak & eggs, or whatever. Enjoy the awesome scenery as you start the long climb out of Denver, wind your way through the narrow canyons where the bright light and dim shade alternate because the sun isn’t yet high enough in the sky, pass by abandoned 19^th-century gold mines, go up one side of the Rocky Mountains and down the other, over Vail and Loveland Passes at around 11,000ft, past several famous ski resorts and other weird and wonderful places with evocative names like Hanging Lake, Officer’s Gulch, Bear Creek, more mundane names like Rifle, Parachute, Gypsum, and - when someone finally got brain-ache and ran out of ideas - No Name. Eventually, about four hours later, you come down into the near-desert of the Grand Valley with stunning high cliffs and flat-top mesas… and acres of vineyard. This is Colorado’s answer to Napa Valley, centred around the town of Palisade, a dozen miles east of Grand Junction.

You will, of course, have booked your hotel room for the next couple of nights months in advance - you won’t find one for love nor money otherwise. You’ll also have booked seats (again, well in advance) at one of the Winemaker’s Dinners – now held in seven different venues over two nights, to cope with the increasingly heavy demand.

Saturday morning you can take some exercise to burn off the steak & eggs – join several hundred other energetic souls (nearly 2,000 at the last estimate) for a 25-mile bike tour of the vineyards (it’s generally pretty flat, allegedly, apart from one small hill). When you’ve done that, pop along to the Memorial Park in Palisade (if you can get near it!) where over half of the State’s 50 wineries will be pouring their wines and showing off the medals they won at the previous day’s “Best of the Fest” competition, judged by top professionals from all over the US (and sometimes beyond). You can also see cookery demonstrations by top local chefs and listen to live jazz by big-name performers.

Sunday morning you can catch a seminar on the mechanics, economics and other problems of grape-growing in this area by the State Viticulturalist – a native of Germany’s Ahr Valley (a great red wine growing area – not a lot of people know that!) – who came here via an 11-year stint in New Zealand. Then spend the rest of the day visiting the tasting rooms of all the wineries you didn’t manage to catch in the park yesterday.

Around tea-time, drive back to Denver. But be warned: the traffic is like the M4 heading back to London on a Sunday evening. Monday, get on a plane home. Tuesday morning, off the plane and back to the office. Tell your friends and colleagues what an amazing, mad, weekend you’ve had.

But enough of the travelogue already – let’s get back to serious business: are the wines any good?

[To be continued…..]

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