CAVE Helps Winemakers Make The Leap From Amateur To Commercial

Kathy Ondrus didn’t like wine. So when her husband suggested they visit a Napa County, California winery, she tagged along, but didn’t anticipate trying a drop. “When a woman working at the winery noticed I wasn’t drinking, she took the time to teach me about wine. After that, I decided I wanted to make wine. I was interested in making a gallon, but my husband bought me an entire wine making system,” she laughs. Seventeen years later, Ondrus is a highly-decorated amateur winemaker on the cusp of opening a commercial Palisade winery with her family.

A registered nurse, Ondrus sees many parallels between cardiac nursing and winemaking. “You have to know your chemistry,” she explains, adding that her professional knowledge of buffer capacity, ventilators, bacteria and yeast have helped with winemaking. After learning as much as she could on her own, Ondrus turned to CAVE, the nonprofit Colorado Association for Viticulture and Enology, to build her skills. “I entered competitions to get feedback as to right and wrong. Taking classes helped me understand the process,” says Ondrus.

CAVE is best known for hosting the Colorado Mountain Winefest each September. But an important part of CAVE’s mission, according to the association’s executive director Cassidee Shull, is to “grow the next generation of winemakers and growers.” This includes an annual amateur winemaking competition. It also means working with commercial winemakers and the Colorado Mesa University (CMU) Tech Viticulture and Enology program in Grand Junction to provide an annual conference, workshops, college classes and networking opportunities.

Shull believes that CAVE’s amateur winemaking competition provides a crucial link between ambitious amateurs and professionals at the top of their field. Amateur winemakers showcase their best wines and receive technical feedback from judges to help them improve. In 2023, more than 100 wines from around the country were evaluated.

One of the judges, Jenne Baldwin-Eaton, is the former head winemaker for Plum Creek Cellars and the founder of the CMU Tech program. Baldwin-Eaton sees two major benefits to the CAVE competition. First, she agrees that the judging helps amateur winemakers build their skills. Second, amateurs are among the leaders in experimenting with new grape varieties being planted in Colorado. “Home winemakers have to be really on top of things,” she explains. “They don’t have the opportunities or tools like we have as commercial winemakers. Overall, [the competition] helps build a stronger Colorado wine industry.”

A winemaker who successfully made the leap from amateur to commercial is Juliann Adams, who, with her family, founded Vines79 in Palisade in 2020. Portuguese by descent, Adams was inspired by her immigrant grandfather who made wine from backyard vines. Adams shares that she “loved the tradition” and was committed to continuing it. At first, she made wine for her family and friends. Then she began entering competitions. “I won a lot of medals and got good feedback. When judges are telling you your wine is good, it’s not friends, but peers,” she says.

“I think the Colorado wine industry is special,” shares Adams. “It’s smaller and newer, and this brings the winemakers here closer together.” She credits CAVE with helping her acquire additional knowledge and education. “There’s only so much you can get from what you can read versus talking to those actually doing it,” she explains.

Ryan Avery Follensbee, the current director of the CMU Tech Viticulture and Enology program agrees, shares that he sees an increase in demand for educational programming 16 following the CAVE competition. “Entrants get a copy of the judges’ notes for their wine and start asking us technical questions. The competition is building something and I see high motivation and desire coming from the amateur sector,” he says, noting increased interest in weekend workshops, alongside higher-education based winemaking experiences.

And while competitions and educational opportunities help improve an individual winemaker’s craft, the ultimate benefit is that they are each pushing the industry forward in their own unique ways.

“I have my own style,” explains Ondrus, who in 2018 and 2019 was the first repeat Grand Champion and Winemaker of the Year in the WineMaker Magazine competition. “I don’t want to do what everyone else is doing. I do my own thing.”

For more information on CAVE programming and events, visit winecolorado.org.

Originally published in the Winter 2024-25 issue of Spoke+Blossom.