<\/p>\n
Jim and Jean Wootton may not have the most sophisticated or biggest winery in Colorado, or even Montezuma County for that matter, but they may have the funnest.<\/p>\n
The couple, operating as Yellow Car Country Wines, specializes in making fruit wines with some creative ventures to keep things interesting, including making a few fruit meads, wine gummies and even a wine sorbet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to be in a suit when you come in to visit. Jean\u2019s not going to be in a formal dress. We wear jeans and flip-flops, but we\u2019re going to have a lot fun. We always want to keep it fun,\u201d Jim Wootton said at the winery they operate out of their Cortez house at 1345 S. Broadway. (Look for the yellow roof, Jim tells folks.)<\/p>\n
The Woottons don\u2019t have acres of tended vines; they mainly rely on fruit given to them by farmers and regional landowners, but in keeping with the Woottons\u2019 theme of having fun, they are not above buying a bushel of fruit from Walmart when the bug to experiment hits Jim, the vintner in the pair.<\/p>\n
Yellow Car made an orange-berry wine that started life as a failed experiment by Jim to make an orange wine, a failure that was saved, at least in Jim\u2019s estimation, by mixing it with his berry wine.<\/p>\n
\u201cNope, I don\u2019t do an orange wine. It can\u2019t be done. It was horrible. I don\u2019t believe anyone can make a good orange wine,\u201d Jim said of his experiment, which he thought he was going to have to pour down the drain.<\/p>\n
But before taking the irrecoverable step of sending his orange wine into the Cortez wastewater stream, he decided to mix it with the nearest batch of wine he had at hand, a berry wine.<\/p>\n
Voil\u00e0.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a gallon of berry wine. I just mixed them, stuck my finger in and mixed them. Took a taste, and said, \u2018Hey, Jean, I think I just fixed the orange wine.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The experimentation is part of the fun for Jim, whose creations also include a peach-jalape\u00f1o wine he makes with jars of Cowboy Caviar, a canned jalape\u00f1o salsa made by Savanna Clutter under the state Cottage Foods Act in Cahone from jalape\u00f1os on her farm.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re young. We just started out. I got my official state license in September. I\u2019m not stuck having to make 1,000 gallons of cabernet sauvignon. We have people leave fruit next to the driveway, and I\u2019ll make wine. That\u2019s the fun part of being small. Who else would make a wine gummy?\u201d Jim said.<\/p>\n
Besides the peach wine gummies, the Woottons are looking at making a strawberry wine sorbet and perhaps a few other wine sorbet flavors.<\/p>\n
Yellow Car is still waiting on federal approval for labels for their orange-berry and peach-jalepe\u00f1o wine, along with several other fruity concoctions.<\/p>\n
They are selling a long list of other fruit wines, including strawberry, the biggest seller so far, which the Woottons attribute to people\u2019s familiarity with Boone\u2019s Farm Strawberry Hill wine.<\/p>\n
They also are selling apricot, cherry, berry, plum, choke cherry, peach, peach-pineapple, tooti-fruiti (a blend of peach, mango, strawberry and pineapple wines), apple-cinnamon, white peach, white strawberry and pumpkin wines.<\/p>\n
They are also selling a cherry mead, a bubbly plum mead and a flat (without bubbles) plum mead.<\/p>\n
Besides the peach-jalape\u00f1o and the orange-berry wines, Yellow Car is also waiting on label approvals for apricot-choke cherry and peach-plum wines.<\/p>\n
Yellow Car makes all its wines in 5-gallon carboys and ages its fruit wines four months, which the Woottons say is all that\u2019s needed for fruit wines<\/p>\n
\u201cFruit wines don\u2019t want to sit,\u201d Jean said.<\/p>\n
The fruit wines will be sweet, but if you insist on being a traditionalist, Yellow Car has plans for a Cortez red and a Cortez white made with grapes from a neighbor\u2019s property down the road.<\/p>\n
But most of the product is fruit wine; some fruit the Woottons pick, some is given to them and some of it is bought to satisfy Jim\u2019s experimental nature.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to make good wine. I don\u2019t worry too much about where the fruit comes from. If I don\u2019t like it, I don\u2019t bottle it,\u201d Jim said.<\/p>\n
The Woottons\u2019 fascination with wine began when Jim was stationed as a military pastor in the Rhine-Moselle region of Germany from 1998 to 2006, and a parishioner was a German vintner who made a sweet and a dry Riesling.<\/p>\n
In 2016, a boom apple harvest in Southwest Colorado, Jim began thinking of making apple schnapps, but found distilling too involved. Making wine by adding some yeast and sugar without all the cooking proved to be the path the couple followed.<\/p>\n
The experiment with apples was followed by one with cherries.<\/p>\n
Soon, neighbors heard about his wine-making experiments and began dropping off surplus fruit from their yards and orchards.<\/p>\n
Mancos Mayor Queenie Barz played a role in giving them the confidence to pursue a business.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe told us, \u2018Hey, this is really good. You should sell it,\u201d Jean said.<\/p>\n
By the end of December, Yellow Car had sold 165 bottles of wine. Jim\u2019s goal is to have 1,000 bottles of wines ready to sell by the summer tourist season.<\/p>\n
Yellow Car is selling its wine for $20 a bottle. It is open from 3 to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturdays.<\/p>\n
The Woottons created a small sale room at the front of their house, and they plan to have their patio ready for outdoor sampling by summer. Finishing business touches like a website will be coming as well, Jim said.<\/p>\n
The timing of the business-end functions of the winery will come in due time, guided by a motto written on a white board in the Woottons\u2019 dining room\/wine laboratory: \u201cGod\u2019s Will, God\u2019s Way, God\u2019s Timing.\u201d<\/p>\n
parmijo@ durangoherald.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018Who else would make a wine gummi\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[338,21,13,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-74560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-business-enterprises","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90454,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74560\/revisions\/90454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74560"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=74560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}