Colterris Winery’s new location showcases world-class collection of wine artifacts

By Steve Graham

It all started with a corkscrew for beer.

Scott High grew up in the wine business, and his curiosity was piqued 54 years ago in a Denver antique store. When he asked the owner about a three-inch Anheuser-Busch bottle for sale, she proceeded to pull a corkscrew out of its back.

Colterris Collections
3708 G Road, Palisade
Open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily
Admission: $20 for adults, $15 for Colterris club members

“And the first thing I said to her was ‘Anheuser-Busch is a beer. How come it has a wine corkscrew?’” Scott said. “She quickly gave me an education that prior to 1910 or so, beer bottles had corks in them, too. So I thought, well, that's really cool. I've got to have that.”

And not just that. Scott has since collected more than 18,000 antique corkscrews and thousands of other pieces of beverage memorabilia. It had been piled up in boxes in storage, but he has put a selection of several thousand items on display at Colterris Collections, the newest attraction in Colorado’s wine country.

The museum-quality space in downtown Palisade is lined with brightly lit display cases that show off the history of wine and other drinks – in Colorado and around the world.

Scott said he had opportunities to display the collection in Durango or Denver or even Napa, but chose to keep it in the Grand Valley.

“A couple of California wineries wanted to donate a space for it,” he said. “But if I had it somewhere else other than where I live, I wouldn't be able to enjoy it every day.”

The collection opened in June in a former Plum Creek Cellars warehouse space. I had a chance to tour the space with Scott on opening day. His memories and stories reflect the giddy wonder that sparked that first beer corkscrew purchase at age 16, and that keeps him traveling the world for treasures.

Scott’s parents were Denver wine and liquor merchants, and he became obsessed with wine.

“Wine, to me, is an all-encompassing topic,” he said. “It has a little bit of science involved, a little bit of art, a little bit of history.”

After traveling the world learning winemaking and wholesaling wine, he wanted to settle down with his wife Theresa.

“We decided that one of our dreams would be to have a vineyard somewhere,” he said. “Not necessarily make wine, but just a vineyard. So we bought a 10-acre peach orchard up here. The peaches were so good, we couldn't take the peach trees out, so we kept buying more land and eventually planted vineyards.”

In 2008, Scott and Theresa released their first wine as Colterris (a mashup of Colorado and Terris, or land). A display case in the Colterris Collections entryway includes some family history and a bottle from that first 2008 harvest.

After the thousands of corkscrews, Scott’s most collected item is the tastevin, an ornate and shallow metal cup once used to select wines. Before electricity and cars, wine merchants would travel by horse or carriage and sample wines in dark cellars. Glass was too fragile to carry. Also, consistency in their wine comparisons was important, so they each carried their own distinctive metal cup.

“They could keep these little silver or pewter Tastavins in their pocket, and it was their tool of the trade,” Scott said. “They became accustomed to how the light would reflect with a candlelight into the wine, examining the color and everything.”

By studying the inscriptions and indentations of various sizes, the merchants could study and select the finest wines. Scott has amassed an impressive and varied collection of European tastevins. Other highlights of the collection include:

Ornate and bejeweled corkscrews from Swarovski, Prada and other luxury brands.
A 1953 bottle of Beaujolais recommended by Duncan Hines who was a real-life gourmand and wine expert before his name took over the cake mix aisle.
Colorado stoneware whiskey jugs dating to about 1890. They look like moonshine jugs from old cartoons, but predate prohibition and were used by legal distilleries.
Abercrombie & Fitch pocket flasks, a pretzel-shaped flask and other artifacts from the Temperance movement, Prohibition and speakeasies.
A rare Coca-Cola flask from the era when cocaine offered an additional buzz in the soda
The wine list from a Scandinavian restaurant on the spot that eventually became the famed Studio 54 nightclub
A 6,200-page wine list (the world’s largest) from Burns Steakhouse in New York
Wine stoppers and other souvenirs from the Concorde supersonic plane

The display room also has a wine bar (of course), under a large mirror with its own historic significance. It was crafted for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, then rescued from a hotel fire during the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake. A local woodworker painstakingly removed more than a century of soot and dust to reveal gold gilding on the frame.

The new Colterris Collections building also includes a second wine bar with charcuterie boards and wine tastings. There also is a private space with an open kitchen for demonstrations, wine pairing dinners and other events. Theresa said she expects to host events about once a month.