“Colorado lacked good sparkling wine, that’s why we built this place,” Sauvage Spectrum Wines winemaker and partner, Patric Matysiewski, told me from behind the bar at their tasting room and winery in Palisade, Colorado. Having just tasted six sparkling wines, I can confirm the results from this very young effort are highly encouraging and we should all be excited for Colorado sparkling wine.
With Patric on the winemaking side, his partner Kaibab Sauvage handles the grape growing. Kaibab has been growing grapes in and around Palisade for over two decades, which means he knows how to keep up his end of the effort to produce the vision they share. Kaibab’s extensive experience really stacks the deck in Sauvage’s favor.
Patric helped me understand that “the latest Colorado wine iteration [which Sauvage is attempting to evolve] was led by people from the oil and gas world, and they wanted to push the varieties and style they [in Colorado] were used to drinking,” namely Bordeaux varieties from California. Needless to say what works in California does not necessarily work as well in Colorado.
Rather than focus on what the generic consumer knows best because they know it the most, “[Sauvage] grow[s] 27 or 28 varieties on 70 acres of estate vineyards,” a mixture of vitis vinifera and hybrid varieties that is helping Patric and Kaibab develop new and terroir-specific knowledge. About 70-80% of the line-up is steadily produced every vintage, with the remainder filled by one-offs and experiments. The result is a wide range of wine types, varieties, and styles, all of quality and promise but to varying extents of refinement.
In addition to going outside the mainstream varieties, as previously mentioned Sauvage is doubling down on sparkling wine because to the extent sparkling wine has been produced in Colorado, “they did Méthode Champenois, which means they had to charge $60 for a bottle [and that’s ridiculous for this market].”
Sauvage’s focus is on simpler and less expensive ways to deliver high quality sparklers to the customer. They produce a range of péttilant naturel, or “pet-nat” for short, wines, which are bottled prior to full fermentation and therefore produce natural carbonation while in the bottle. The result is often less, and certainly less defined, carbonation that traditional Champagne or wines made in that method, but because they require significantly less human involvement and wine facilities to produce, they can to be sold at a fraction of the price and do not require the aging that benefits Champagne and Champagne-style wines.
Pet-nats are a fan favorite of the geeky wine world, but are reaching broader audiences as they feature in more local wine stores and on wine lists at prestigious and popular restaurants. One of my favorites of the lineup at Sauvage was the Pet-Nat White, a blend of 85% albarińo and 15% aromella. A hazy and yeasty wine, the nose wafted Meyer lemon, vanilla, honeysuckle, and cantaloupe. It has a mousse that is dense with bubbles but light in weight that combines with bright and brisk acidity and a little residual sugar to build a substantive structure. The flavor profile includes sweet butter cream, pineapple, Opal apple, and orange rind. In making this wine, Patric keeps it on the skins for 10 days and actually foot treads the grapes. I give it 90 points and, at $25, a value rating of A-.
My favorite wine from the lineup was the Sparklet Rose, a wine that Patric admitted he force carbonates. It’s the same theory as the pet-nats: produce a really tasty wine that’s accessible to a lot of people, especially those with discerning palates and an open mind. The nose offers strawberry, lime, nectarine, cherry, and green pepper corns. Medium in weight, the carbonation is robust, mingling with significant acid and modest skin tannin to produce a refreshing structure sure to stand up to summer meals. On the flavor side, it has watermelon, cherry skins, and raspberry. I give this one 91 points with a value rating of A.
My favorite still wine was the 2020 Roussane, which is barrel fermented and aged. The nose features guava, cactus fruit, curd, and apricot. Medium in stature, the acid and oak influence produce a thick and smooth texture with a nice grippy sensation. The lightly buttered flavor profile includes quince, persimmon, guava, and peach cobbler. It deserves (in my estimation) 91 points and an A value rating.
The red wines showed the greatest room for improvement. Malbec seems to be the most promising red variety, a notion that Patric confirmed in our post-tasting conversation. Like the rest of the Sauvage line up, I hope to be able to follow them over the coming years.
Despite the growing tally of terrible things happening in the world every day, there’s a lot of good wine being made, perhaps more than at any point in history. This is a thing to celebrate. Wine is not only an expression of what the Earth can do, but what we as humans can do as well, especially when we pay attention to the Earth and work well with others. Wine brings people together, is capable of engendering pure joy, and elevates everything around it, from the food it accompanies to the conversations we have while enjoying it and connections we make when talking with others who love it as we do. Try Colorado sparkling wine, and Sauvage Spectrum in particular, because we could all use the kind of positive surprise in our glass that only good wine from off the beaten path can deliver.
