Dry Storage is more than just a bakery

Great taste is deeply ingrained

Story and Photos By Kristin Owens

Dry Storage isn’t just a bakery. It’s a mill. And a laboratory. Basically, it’s a complete concept that champions a new food ecosystem. A tall order, but one the health-conscious and environmentally friendly Boulder community has embraced. 

James Beard-nominated chef Kelly Whitaker is the force behind Dry Storage. After years of culinary experience around the world, he moved back to Colorado in 2010. Whitaker understood the farm-to-table movement, but wanted to embrace Colorado cuisine. He asked, what makes it unique? How does the soil, water and altitude affect baking? It turns out, it’s all about the grains. 

Dry Storage uses five varieties of heirloom grains that have more robust roots and regenerative factors than large industrial crops. They are more sustainable and reduce climate change impacts – a better farming solution for everyone. By using locally grown grains, carbon footprints are reduced during transportation. They’re also, “culturally relevant,” Whitaker says. And in Colorado, there’s no shortage of them. As a trained chef, he recognized the grains are a “beautiful medium for year-round menus.”

With that in mind, Whitaker built a mill: a 3,000-square-foot facility that grinds 200 acres of Colorado grains into flour using traditional granite stone. The bakery uses the flour in-house, sells bags to retail customers and offers it wholesale to chefs and restaurants. The result? “A regional grain opportunity at the highest level,” Whitaker says. In a year nearly wrecked by a pandemic, Dry Storage sold nearly 1 million pounds of its milled flours. 

Inside the bakery, it’s a state-of-the-art operation. Clean lines, black and white simplicity, and a bespoke selection of gourmet breads resting under a cube of plexiglass. They bake sourdough, French baguettes, English muffins and seeded loaves. Co-owner Erika Whitaker says customers call it “the Apple store for bread.” She says their goal is to, “change the white-bread sandwich mentality.” There are many delicious options that they provide to customers.

But as with any successful business, it’s a learning process. The research and development room offers opportunities to continually tweak recipes and evolve. Recently, staff was researching laminations, a program used in producing croissants. And when you think it couldn’t be more scientific, they even use the metric system. Kelly Whitaker says, “it’s a pivotal moment for Colorado … the grain business fuels so many people.” Distillers, maltsters, brewers, bakers and others are all tied to the farmland. 

A select menu offers delicious quiche, miso soup, and Smorrebrod with a daily rotating topping on rye. Is it breakfast or lunch? Who cares? With a natural wine, beer and Devocion coffee, Dry Storage also has all the drink options covered. Between buying local, supporting locally produced organic grains, and positively impacting the local food climate, customers deserve that extra croissant. Just make sure to show up Tuesday through Sunday between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m.  

Contributor Kristin Owens passed the Court of Master Sommeliers’ Introductory Examination and travels the world looking for a good $10 bottle of wine. She’s a full-time writer based in Fort Collins.

Peachy in Palisade — the history of Colorado's most alluring fruit

The famed Western Slope orchards have been growing for more than a century

By Steve Graham

It all started with a letter to an Iowa farmer. Talbott’s Farm grows some of Colorado’s most coveted fruit, and crafts plenty of hard cider and wine. And the whole operation began 114 years ago with a letter.

Before TV advertising and Facebook campaigns, land developers on the Western Slope tried to attract buyers by sending letters directly to Iowa farmers. Joseph Evan Yeager was one of those grain farmers, attracted by the promise of better weather and rich alluvial soils.

He was among a wave of rural Iowans who settled in the Grand Valley. Yeager’s 5th generation descendent Bruce Talbott said at least half of the Palisade population was originally from Iowa, inspiring an Iowa Street in town, and Iowa Day celebrations in Grand Junction in the early 1900s.

Yeager moved to Palisade and started growing peaches and other fruit in 1907. The Talbott family married into the Yeager family and more than a century later, the family now oversees a 550-acre operation that includes the Talbott’s Mountain Gold orchards and wine vineyards, as well as Talbott’s Cider Company, Centennial Cellars wines, and a popular line of sweet ciders and juices.

Talbott’s has the largest orchards in the area, and is known for supporting and helping other Mesa County businesses.

“The Talbott family are icons in the Palisade area,” said Julia Durmaj, acting director of the Palisade Chamber of Commerce. “Not only have they been farming here for over 100 years but they have been a predominant influence to so many other farmers in the area, always willing to give a ‘hand up’ to those who need advice about their crops.”

Yeager’s great great grandson Harry Talbott is credited with building both the family business and the larger Palisade peach industry. He died earlier this year, and his sons and grandsons now help run the business. 

The Grand Valley is known for an ideal combination of climate and soil conditions, resulting in large, sweet and flavorful fruit. Talbott’s Mountain Gold was once primarily an apple farm, but it is now best known for piles of peaches every August.

“The peach industry is our sweetheart,” Bruce said. “It’s what allows us to do the other things we do.”

In the mid-20th Century, Colorado peach farmers were mostly supplying a large population of home canners. 

“People back then had big gardens,” Bruce said. “They were already canning tomatoes and sweet corn and pickles and whatever else. Peaches were just one more thing that they canned.” 

He said home canning started to phase out in the 1970s, when Del Monte and other large companies started selling really cheap canned fruit. The Talbotts’ business took a hit, but by the 1980s, they started selling fresh peaches directly to supermarkets in the region.

Now, Talbott’s grows enough peaches to drive them over the Continental Divide every day and stock pop-up peach stands along the Front Range and in neighboring states.

“We try to keep an endless parade of peaches headed into the system,” Bruce said.

Talbott’s now grows 35 varieties, and sells ripe peaches from July 1 to Oct. 1. Last year, only 15 percent of the peach harvest survived a cold and late spring. Bruce expects about 80 percent of the peach harvest to make it to stores and farm stands this year. 

Talbott’s orchards used to be 90-percent apples, but consolidation and industry changes have moved nearly all domestic apple production to the Pacific Northwest. 

In 1983, Bruce started pressing apples and making sweet cider. 

“We were trying to find something to do with our off-grade (apples),” Bruce said.

Now Talbott’s grows no apples, but still makes plenty of cider — both sweet and hard.

Harry’s grandson Charles Talbott turned his interest in home brewing into a new Talbott’s venture in 2015. He is the director of operations for Talbott’s Cider Company. It is one of the state’s most recognizable hard cider brands, even though Washington and Oregon apples comprise most of the cider.

In 2019, the family launched the Centennial Cellars wine brand. Charles said it has been hard to compete on crowded bottled wine shelves, but he jumped on the canned wine bandwagon in May. 

Following in the footsteps of Denver trailblazer Infinite Monkey Theorem, the company is now focusing on a variety of 375 ml wine cans, and only bottling special reserve wines. He said he is hoping to help boost the reputation of Colorado wines.

“I’m starting to have a little more confidence that in the next 20 years, the Colorado wine industry is going to be pretty big. I think we are putting ourselves on the map,” Charles said.

The wine and cider is available in the Talbott’s taproom on a hill overlooking Palisade. The taproom also hosts guest wines and ciders, and has a small market that sells a wide variety of local produce and other Colorado products.

“We really focus on collaboration,” Charles said. “We want the entire industry working together, and that will raise everyone’s boat.”

Steve Graham is a freelance writer and former newspaper editor who takes his two boys biking, hiking and brewery-hopping in northern Colorado.