Denver Wine Radio

Matt Cundill  0:01  
You may also like a show about the things you may also like things like Denver wine radio. Paul Bonaquisti is the owner of Bonaquisti Wines in Denver, Colorado. If you ever visit this urban winery, you can find any number of things going on in there, including music, food, wine tasting, or even a podcast recording. Yes, they have their own podcast too. Today, you'll learn lots about the wines that get made in Colorado. But for Paul, before wine, there was radio.

Paul Bonaquisti  0:39  
There was radio, radio was my chosen career.

Matt Cundill  0:43  
What did you do in radio?

Paul Bonaquisti  0:45  
I started on air in a small town in Columbus. So I was actually a, I was a nightclub DJ for about two or three years. And I'm from Denver. But the club I worked for back then had a they owned like seven clubs around the country, and one was in Columbus, Ohio. So they'd sent me out to Columbus, and I was out there for about a year and then they shut the club down. But at that same time, I was sending out tapes. There's, you know, in the Midwest, there's all these little stations. So my first gig was a WQIO in Mount Vernon, Ohio. And I was I would drive 55 miles one way to work overnights on the weekend, for 335 an hour, that was minimum wage. So from there, I brought it back to Denver and got a gig here in Denver, and then worked into a full time on air position. And then eventually, I was made to production and imaging director.

Matt Cundill  1:35  
So in a moment of coincidence, because there are 1000s and 1000s of radio stations across the United States. And hopefully I'm not breaking any laws by mentioning this. But as you know, I'm a voiceover artist. I also do radio imaging, and I just did a rebrand for WQIO earlier this week.

Paul Bonaquisti  1:53  
Oh, you're kidding. Crazy. What? Yeah, what's the what's the format? Love to know?

Matt Cundill  1:59  
It's called the Super Q?

Paul Bonaquisti  2:01  
Yeah, the super cute. Oh my God, it was the Super Q and this was 1987 ish. Yeah. 1987 the super Q WQIO.

Matt Cundill  2:10  
That's phenomenal of all the stations in America that that came up and I just done some work for them earlier this week. That's it's not. Yeah.

Paul Bonaquisti  2:19  
So when I first started there, they had me training, you know, they had to train me with the overnight guy. And then they finally left me on my own. But the overnight guy his name was John Zellner. So he would do some kind of late night shift there overnight, and then he would drive to the south end of Columbus, completely on the south side and work a midday shift at another station. So okay, then flash forward to the early 2000s. And I'm working here in Denver. The cluster is owned by CBS Radio, and I'm going through the email database. And I see Jon Zellner, and he's like VP of, you know, programming and blah, blah, blah. So I shoot him a note and I just said, Hey, you know, I was this rookie green guy, you. You trained that back in the day, and I don't know where he's at now. But he's

Matt Cundill  3:10  
an IHeart, and he's a VP. And he works with a lot of talent. He's a great guy. I met him about five or six years ago. And again, there's another coincidence and another name and you and I have been working together for years. And look at all these coincidences.

Paul Bonaquisti  3:23  
Yeah. Yeah, he was. He was a great guy. And yeah, held my hand there. You

Matt Cundill  3:28  
found your way back to Denver, and you did some some work on the radio in Denver, too. Yeah,

Paul Bonaquisti  3:32  
came back to Denver, then started part time local station here in Denver. Eventually, they bought another station and they flipped it to Alice 106. So this was in the early 90s. So I started swinging. I was like a swing guy between both stations, just picking up shifts, vacations, all that and then they fired the afternoon guy, put me in just to fill in, then kept me. I stayed on afternoons at Alice in the 90s and then went on vacation, came back and I was the night guy. So it was great radio stories, like go on vacation, didn't get fired, but was basically demoted to the knife guy. And then five months later, I got fired.

Matt Cundill  4:20  
Tell me about your passion for wine. How did that develop? At what age and what was the gateway wine?

Paul Bonaquisti  4:26  
Oh, wow. So my grandfather was an Italian immigrant. came to Colorado, work to coal mines down near in the southern end of the state near Trinidad, Colorado, a lot of coal mines around there. So all the old Italians made their own wine. So that's how my dad learned he grew up making wine. And then when I was in high school, he started making wine in the garage. He's like, hey, I want to make wine again. And started ordering grapes making wine made a lot of bad wine, and then going through the 80s we made wine every year. kind of changed. got the recipe if you you know, different grapes. And that's really how I got introduced to wine. We stopped for a while because I was moved, you know, I was moving around the country and stuff. But then the house I live in now when I moved into that house, I told my dad, hey, let's start making wine again. So we did, I took a more modern approach to it. He had the old school Italian thing going on, I just took a more modern approach to winemaking primary fermenter keeping everything clean. And so really, that's, that's what happened I was just doing that got fired when they flipped our station country. That was in 2005. And I told my wife, Hey, we should open an urban winery in our neighborhood. And that's how it happened. My gateway wine when I was growing up, there used to be a lot of Reinier 80 on the round because it was sweeter and easy, you know, easy drinking. But then my wife when we were dating, I invited her over dinner, and I went and bought a bottle of white zinfandel. And then she showed up with a bigger bottle of white zinfandel. And so and we drank them. And but that's that's really where I started drinking.

Matt Cundill  6:08  
What are some of the challenges involved in an urban winery, as compared to something that might be you know, out in the hills or in the mountains, but here you are in town. The

Paul Bonaquisti  6:17  
challenge has always been to educate the public on the difference between winemaking which is the manufacturing of the wine, and the vineyard the grape growing the agriculture. So they don't have to be together. We have this vision. There's this romanticism about the wine industry of rolling Tuscan hills and the guy you know, and you're sniffing your wine out in the vineyard. And I mean, that's the case for a lot of wineries. They have their own vineyards. But there's plenty of wineries in wine country that are near vineyards that don't own vineyards, and they buy grapes and they bring it into a warehouse and they crushed they ferment the bottle and sell the wine.

Matt Cundill  6:57  
For other winemakers around the world are people who are just generally interested in wine and making their own wine. How do you describe to them the climate in Colorado,

Paul Bonaquisti  7:07  
I've always described it as a hot climate. I mean, we have the high elevation. So we have some of the highest vineyards in the world. The main grape growing region in Colorado is called the Grande Valley we have two HBAs. That's one of our two HBAs. The vineyards are 4600 to 5000 feet, then we are second a VA West ELx. The elevation is like 6000 feet. So the two climates are different. But because we have a bit of a shorter growing season in general, it gets hot. And the temperature swings like hot days cool nights, which you need in in grape growing, but the temperature pushes towards 100. I mean 95 100 degrees and palisade. That's the town, but cools down to the low 60s. So you've got that great swing in temperature. But those hot temperatures because we traditionally we would let those big reds need to hang just a little bit longer in order to get overall ripeness like to get acid down. And so a lot of times the that sugar content would go up. So you'd get these big, you know, some really big reds coming out of Colorado.

Matt Cundill  8:11  
And you mentioned that the temperature swings, there have been some days that have been in the you know, close to 100. And then 24 to 36 hours later, you could be down in the 30s and 40s Depending on how nasty mother nature could be. How do you deal with all that?

Paul Bonaquisti  8:26  
Yeah, well, I haven't seen that drastic from like from going up and from the 90s down to the 30s. But so in 2019 and 2020. We had two years in a row in October where October is beautiful. I mean it's harvest season, we can we get these 70s 80 degrees lows, or let down in the 50s. You get some really good ripening. Of course, you could say bad weather would come in and go while there's a freeze coming. But in those two years we had it went down below 30. It was in the 20s and it killed the vines down to the ground. So that type of thing. You deal with it with a lot of vineyards are planting hybrid grapes, which are across between the different your regular winemaking grapes, and these cold hardy varietals that are being developed at like University of Minnesota. So so they can withstand a temperature swing like that.

Matt Cundill  9:22  
Give me the best white and the best red, which if you're going to present that as these are the best Colorado wines, what's going to be the grape for the white and which one is going to be what kind of varietals are going to be for the red. And I understand your answer might be different than somebody else in another part of Colorado. Yeah.

Paul Bonaquisti  9:41  
Riesling is a great grape that's historically done very well here in Colorado. We've had world class reasonings come out of the state. It's still one of my favorites. And then if we were going to pick a single read, I would say Cabernet Franc is still phenomenal. It always has the earthiness good structure, not as tannic as Cabernet Sauvignon. But it really thrives well here in the state

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  10:14  
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Matt Cundill  10:28  
What makes Colorado wines so

Paul Bonaquisti  10:30  
special? Well, it's the winemakers

Matt Cundill  10:34  
clearly,

Paul Bonaquisti  10:37  
No, we just have this great sunshine and you know, great weather conditions. And the winds that come out of Colorado are very fruit forward and robust and ready to drink so and not that they won't lay down that just depends on the winemaking style. Some some wineries are making wines that will sell her nicely over the next 1015 years. So what

Matt Cundill  10:59  
about the relationship that you have with other Colorado wineries? Like say, you know, Kingdom estates or carboy, or Plum Creek? How do you collaborate, maybe work together or share information to make the industry better.

Paul Bonaquisti  11:12  
There's wineries here on the front range, which is the Denver boulder up and down the corridor North going north and south. And then you've got a lot of wineries over on the western side of the state. And that's where the grapes are being grown. So we all work together, especially here in the front range. People in the tasting room, we recommend other wineries to go to while you mentioned carboy. They they host a Rosae tasting event every year, which other Colorado wineries are invited to Blanchard Family Wines, their downtown, they have a couple other locations around the state. They host a Colorado wine walk three times this year one twice in Denver once up in Fort Collins. So these are the type of things we're doing to get the word out.

Matt Cundill  11:55  
Casey in to help me out on a few of the other things that you've talked about on your podcast before. Things that make me cringe or go I'm not sure I would like that. But yeah, they exist in their goods such as box wine. I box wine is something that I think oh, I don't know that. I

Paul Bonaquisti  12:10  
want that. But maybe I do it. You do? You do? Definitely. Because box wine is not the way it used to be. I mean, you look at the way packaging has evolved over the years and there's always you know, there's canned wine and box wine is not just you know, franzia or Sutter Home. Nothing wrong if you drink those, okay, but there are higher quality wines being put in boxes and pricing to go along with that, too. Why are they packaged in boxes? environmental reasons for one saves on packaging? Shipping bottles across the world? Pricey heavy? Yeah, yes, it just cuts down on the weight guy, you can ship more wine for the same amount if you're filling a container. Plus the wine is convenient. doesn't go bad. I think a box would probably last couple of months in your frigerator. And it's always fresh every glass every every time you squeeze. What

Matt Cundill  13:07  
about some of the derivatives, you know, aside from wine, so if let's say I go to Spain, there's parts that I can get into some sherry. And if I go to Portugal, I can get into port. If I go to the north of Spain, there is cider, and Colorado's got some cider, too. So what are some of the derivatives including cider in Colorado?

Paul Bonaquisti  13:27  
So we have 170 ish wineries in Colorado. And of that cideries are included. And I want to say there's 2530 ish of those are cideries I'm not exactly sure on the number. And then Mead two is another product being made in Colorado. So I love the cider industry because they they have a more a more aggressive experimental side of them more like beer. So a lot of different flavors, different things being infused. And so that's that's the kind of things going on. The winery is more than just wine.

Matt Cundill  14:06  
There's a lot that goes on there, including and I love this. I haven't been I can only envision. There's a studio where you can record podcasts, there is music and events, there is food, there's wine, but there's also you know, a few cocktails. Sometimes I think you've got some Sangria on the menu. amongst some other things. Tell me about everything about the winery that doesn't have to do with wine that somebody might not know about. It's cultural more than anything, right? Like it's wine, but it's also food music and France. It

Paul Bonaquisti  14:38  
is it really is. So live music has been a part of our winery here from the beginning. And the bands are all their local bands, which really drives the community out. We've always been community driven. That's part of it, offering wine based cocktails for those who don't necessarily like wine It has been part of that we we developed a wine based cocktail list quite a few years ago. Some of the favorites Stay, stay around last summer we added a new cocktail to simulate a Aperol Spritz. Because spirits are not allowed here under my license. We can't have beer or spirits on the premise so, so we have a good version of that. We do some food in house with some traditional Italian Chicago eatery and Italian sausage. And then we we have a barbecue food truck that comes in regularly. Also, wine and cheese pairing. We do a wine and cheese class once a month with a local cheese shop. Lots of other events that are network driven that we host.

Matt Cundill  15:46  
So your studio looks way better than my studio. I can only dream to get my studio as nice looking as yours. The one thing I do have behind me is a wine fridge at which point I'm gonna go and reach into the wine fridge and pull something out.

Paul Bonaquisti  15:59  
Oh, yeah, let's see what you got

Oh, look at that. That's a beautiful bottle right there. made its way into Canada. Love it. It did. We

Matt Cundill  16:14  
got it back. And this is the the 2022 Sangiovese AZ. And I'm thinking this is probably a good time to drink it. Not right now. But this weekend, we've got Canada Day on Monday. And I think next Thursday, as we record this, it will be Independence Day in the United States. So this weekend, or next weekend will be the right time to drink this. Paul, what am I going to pair with this to eat?

Paul Bonaquisti  16:39  
Plus, Canada beating Peru and COPPA the other day was fantastic. So you may have another reason to celebrate.

Matt Cundill  16:48  
Yeah, and it's too bad. The referee didn't bring out any of his cards. At least he couldn't find them.

Paul Bonaquisti  16:51  
That's right. All right. So Sangiovese let's say this. Italian varietals don't grow very well in Colorado, okay. We just need a little bit longer growing season for them. And I stumbled across his vineyard in 2016. guy had planted it in 2006. So I've been working with him ever since. And every year it would just not ripen up correctly. So I used to blend it I used to use it as the base for a blend on a label I have and had very good success with that label have made a lot of Rosae from it because it just because of the growing conditions it lends itself to rosacea. But in 2022, for whatever reason, the grapes ripened up a little bit higher than they normally do, but the acid dropped way down. So we had this really good balance. And that is the first time that I bottled a Colorado Sandra of AC. So it is very traditional. I would say it's Italian like it's very it's tart cherry, very perfumey, classic Sangiovese so that's going to pair well with tomato base dishes. Because tomatoes are high acid and technically a cherry is flavor and tomatoes, but they're going to pair up nicely with the equal in that wine. You want to pair high acid with high acid foods. Highest wine high acid.

Matt Cundill  18:18  
I love it. So I'll dig into it this weekend. In keeping with the football, Italy does play at some point. So I'll open up the bottle when Italy is playing their game.

Paul Bonaquisti  18:29  
I love that. Yeah, yeah, I looked it up there. They play Switzerland 2am This Sunday, our time here so I will not be up. Okay.

Matt Cundill  18:39  
Paul, thanks so much for for joining me on the podcast to talk about wine and Denver wine radio.

Paul Bonaquisti  18:45  
Absolutely. Thanks, Matt for having me.

Matt Cundill  18:49  
My thanks to Paul for joining me. If you ever find yourself in Denver, look up Bon acquisti wines. Pop in and try some wine. You never know what's going on. And if you can't make it to Denver, you can check out Denver wine radio.com and enjoy some of the awesome podcast episodes. This episode was produced by Evan Surminski and edited by Aidan Glassey and it's built for your ears by everyone at the sound off media company.