Adams County – Tucked away in a tiny pocket of unincorporated Adams County, just across the river from the sewage treatment ponds and upwind from Xcel’s coal-fired power plant, lies the Balistreri Vineyard and Winery.
Row after row of grape-laden vines cover five acres at the corner of 66th Avenue and Washington Street, where heavy lumber trucks rumble out of wholesale yards and a nearby pipe company flies a sign asking for more welders.
Napa Valley it’s not. But the land has been very good to four generations of the Balistreris, who emigrated from Sicily in the 1920s, and they aren’t about to leave.
“We were here first,” said Julie Balistreri, who is gradually inheriting the family’s business. “This used to be all farmland around here until the industries moved in. But it’s no different than France, where many vineyards are on the edge of cities.”
Julie’s great-grandparents ran a vegetable truck-farm. Their family grew, then divided, into grandparents, aunts, uncles and dozens of cousins.
“Around 1965, we built some greenhouses and began growing flowers,” said John Balistreri, Julie’s 63-year-old father. “We started with carnations, then branched out into sunflowers, sweet peas, fragrant lilies.”
By the 1990s, they had 200,000 square feet of greenhouses, and flowers became their cash crop. Along the way, John Balistreri and one of his uncles began making wine, experimenting with fermentation techniques and different varieties of grapes.
In 1998, they received a winery license and produced their first commercial vintage of 20 barrels, which they released in 2000. What started as a hobby soon would become their lifeline. Over the past five years, rising natural-gas prices along with cheaper imports gradually forced them out of the flower business.
“We’re doing fine, actually a little better, because our costs are lower,” said John Balistreri, who estimates they produce about 2,700 cases of wine a year.
John Balistreri’s taste in wines is somewhat unique. But he follows his intuition more than the market and produces the wines he likes – very full, rich fruity flavors that are smooth and easy to drink. They use very mature grapes that produce a much higher alcohol content – 16 percent compared with the normal 12 percent to 14 percent. They don’t add sulfites or yeast, relying on natural fermentation for the richness and smoothness.
Except for a small amount of Zinfandel grapes they buy from California, they use exclusively Colorado grapes. Each bottle designates the vineyard the grapes came from and the number of the barrel used for fermentation.
“We don’t strive for consistency,” John Balistreri said. “We consistently make good wines, but they vary from year to year and from vineyard to vineyard.”
Staff writer Mike McPhee can be reached at 303-820-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com.
