New Hotchkiss winery boasts major investment, deep knowledge

Story and photos by Steve Graham

Alex Castillo-Llamas is always on the move.

He grew up as a migrant farm laborer, then helped open his family’s prestigious California winery. Now he is bringing that experience and work ethic to the hills above Hotchkiss, where he operates Fallen Mountain Wines with co-founders Michelle Fishering Castillo and Craig Kesselman. Assistant winemaker and shepherd Justin Homitz rounds out the core team.

We had a chance to tour the property on an ATV, taste their wines and hear their stories.

The winery produces limited quantities of wine for private tastings, available by appointment only. Fallen Mountain is perfecting the wine and gradually moving into wider distribution and into fine restaurants around the region and across the country. The team’s ultimate goal is boosting Colorado’s reputation in the wine world.

“We want to be pioneers in world-class wine production in the state of Colorado,” Alex said.

A classic success story

Alex had a long and difficult, if fortuitous, path to making top-shelf wine.

His family is from Mexico, and since the 1940s, they had been following the seasons as migrant farm workers up and down the west coast. By the time Alex was old enough to pick fruit, three generations of his family were in the labor troop.

A pear farmer gave them a rare five-day break. But Alex’s grandfather never took a day off. He scoped out opportunities in the Napa Valley, where most of the family ended up with full-time jobs in the burgeoning wine industry.

Alex lucked into positions with wineries and restaurants that ended up becoming some of the biggest names in the industry. He was busing tables for extra money when a co-worker invited him to help at another restaurant.

“He said ‘It’s the French Laundry,’ to which I replied, ‘what am I going to do at a laundromat?’” Alex laughed.

He quickly learned that the oddly named business is a restaurant with three Michelin stars that celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once called “the best restaurant in the world.”

The job gave him a crash course in gastronomy and oenology.

“It doesn't matter if it's $2 a bottle or $2,000 a bottle. The world's greatest wines evoke positive memories,” Alex said. “Once I was able to make that connection, all I wanted to do was become a winemaker.”

In 2009, he launched Llamas Family Wines (Llamas is his mother’s maiden name) with his uncle Oscar, which grew into an acclaimed and successful small winery focused on Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay wines.

Moving to Colorado

Meanwhile Alex met his future wife Michelle in Napa. She grew up in Montrose, and had moved to Napa to develop her knowledge and connections, with the goal of taking her skills to a lesser-known wine region.

She told Alex as much on their third date.

“I told him ‘I have no desire and no plan to stay in Napa,’” Michelle said, noting that most of Alex’s family was in Napa. “‘So if that's a non-negotiable for you, we should just have fun, but we should go in knowing that. And we can just have fun and not take this too seriously.’”

They took it very seriously. After Alex and Michelle were married, they traveled to several wine regions before she came back to western Colorado to visit a brother who moved back home.

Her brother took them to Azura Cellars in Paonia, and they started to see the region’s potential. Then they saw the Hotchkiss property. Despite being half a continent from Alex’s family in California and Mexico, both Alex and Michelle said they felt Hotchkiss should be their home.

Craig was their next business partner, and he brought a depth of entrepreneurial and investment experience. Alex was initially skeptical they should work together, but Craig was adamant.

“I told him, ‘If you don't pursue your passion to make a world-class wine, then I'd be pissed,’” Craig recalled. “‘I can't do what you do, but I can do the business side of it.’”

Deep vineyard roots

The Fallen Mountain team brings about 60 years of Napa Valley winemaking experience to Hotchkiss. Michelle has a master’s degree in the chemistry of winemaking, and has worked in most aspects of the industry, as have Alex and his parents, who will help with the harvest and winemaking.

Still, Alex and Michelle will start over and learn about Colorado’s soil, climate and fruit.

“The greatest disservice that I could do to this new project is to try to move forward with any knowledge that I have from the Napa Valley,” Alex said. “There are completely different growing conditions, and a completely different soil composition. … Ninety-nine percent of the wines that I produce here, I had never worked with these grapes prior.”

The winery’s name is an homage to that soil.

“Fallen Mountain is an ode to the old volcanoes in the region that have since fallen,” Alex said. “And that is what left the geological footprint of the soils that define where we grow our grapes. So when you look at all this volcanic rock, that's Fallen Mountain right there.”

In addition to wine grapes, Fallen Mountain also will grow other produce as cover crops and to help round out charcuterie boards and, eventually, full gourmet meals at the winery.

A sustainable business

The business is a long-term investment in sustainable agriculture. The Castillos and Kesselman bought the property in 2021, and started producing wine in 2023, mainly with grapes from Sauvage Spectrum and other vineyards in the valley.

When they took over the 32-acre property, its vineyards were nearly all dead. They had been neglected by a previous owner who focused on apples, leaving the chardonnay vineyard unirrigated and withering.

“It was literally nothing but dead wood as far as the eye could see,” Alex said.

But he discovered that plenty of unused water was available for the property. The fallow vineyards and 15 acres of apple orchard space are gradually being revived with grapes.

“Since we've been bringing it back and producing wine from it, we've named it the resurrection vineyard,” Alex said while bumping around the property on his off-road side-by-side.

On the other hand, some existing apple and cherry trees will remain in place to block wind and frost, act as fenceposts and provide some shelter for the sheep Justin is raising on the property.

Justin has several titles, but is most proud of “shepherd.” Justin is a restaurant industry veteran who grew a vegetable market garden in Arvada. Now he is excited to expand into animal husbandry.

Helping other wineries

The Fallen Mountain team also wants to grow the reputation of Colorado wine overall.

Alex subscribes to the “rising tides lift all ships” business philosophy, and is working with other wineries to improve all their products.

“We felt that the Colorado wine industry, in order to elevate to the next level, needed a certain level of uniformity and an information sharing network,” Alex said. “So we started a tasting group, but we would only invite winemakers or principals of wineries from within the state of Colorado.”

He researched varietals at similar elevations and climates around the world, and compared Colorado wines to bottles from Europe and elsewhere. He also asks Colorado winemakers to share every step of their process and every ingredient. There was apprehension at first, but after a couple of years, Alex said his peers are really eager to participate — sometimes even with their failed experiments.

“What we're going to learn from more is when you bring us your most incredible failures, that's where we actually learn,” Alex said. “That's a hard one, though, because winemakers are super passionate, and there's an element of vulnerability. There’s a lot of ego in wine out here. We come from Napa. We know ego. That's what we're trying to break.”

He said Colorado could become a world-famous wine producer with consistently excellent wine.

“I think there's already world-class wine made here, but I don't think it serves the industry if it’s hit and miss,” Alex said. “If we can all start consistently producing world-class wine and get the reflectors on us, that's what's really going to uplift this industry.”

And Colorado must put its own unique stamp on the industry.

“You know, a lot of people look to Provence, and they do everything they can in the vineyard, in the cellar, to mirror that,” Alex said. “That's not us. And this is not Provence.”