Our Story
Welcome to Buckel Family Wine, our award-winning, family-owned and operated winery in colorful Colorado.
While we could have taken a conventional road and set up shop on the west coast, we took a higher and drier road and found our home on the Western Slope of Colorado, an underdeveloped wine region ripe for adventure.
We were ready to craft high altitude wine.
Lucky for us, we discovered we didn’t need to sacrifice mountain living to craft high-quality wine. We are fortunate to ride, hike, and ski the same landscapes that our incredible local partners harvest each year, right here in Colorado.
We firmly embrace the unique and challenging terroir of Colorado creating Old World Style wines with minimal intervention — our craftsmanship and quality is not in spite of our home, but because of it. It brings us great pride to partner with and play alongside a host of other Western Slope wineries, vineyards, wine shops, and restaurants as we cultivate Colorado’s wine community together.
Our Mission
To fulfill the appetite of the adventurous wine drinker with wine that expresses the absolute best of the land, climate, and growers in Colorado.
Raising A Glass to Colorado Adventure.
Colorado is built for unbottling adventure. 300 days of sun, where trails glow gold. Warm dry air, fit for a MTB ride on hero dirt made for Cabernet Franc. High mountain summits, suited for a sunset hike and a bottle of PétNat.
We share a bottle backpacking or after a happy hour hike. After a one hundred—or ten—mile road ride. After a long day skiing powder with friends or gliding on freshly-groomed corduroy with our families.
We believe that wine simply tastes better after a little adventure, be it big or small. Whether it’s a table or campfire you’re gathering around, we invite you to take a seat (or log), share a bottle and a story, and experience the very best that Colorado has to offer.
Our Tasting Room & Experiences
CHEERS!
From an indispensable relationship with the Western Slope’s incredible grape farmers, a keen attention at every stage of wine making, and a down-right loyal enthusiasm for sharing seasonal, exceptionally-good, locally-sourced food around the table, life in Colorado is just too good.
And always calls for really good wine.
About Our Wine
The long and short of it: we make all of our wines using the very best grapes the local land has to offer. We use minimal intervention in the winemaking process to make sure they shine — no added grape juice concentrate necessary. All of our reds, and a few of our whites, are unfined and unfiltered, so you may see sediment in the bottle, it’s drinkable — well maybe chew on it .
The Buckel Family
-
Joe Buckel - The Risk Taker
To put it simply, Joe knows wine. From studying his father’s impressive cellar, to crafting exquisite wines in Sonoma at Flowers Vineyard and Winery, BR Cohn Winery, and nearby at Sutcliffe Vineyards, to carving out his own niche here in Colorado, Joe Buckel lives and breathes good wine. With risk comes reward: Joe’s wines have received 90 point ratings from Wine Enthusiast. Highly passionate (and majorly scientific) about the process from harvest to bottle, he can think anyone under the table when it comes to wine. Fortunately for us, he is equally passionate about sharing the wealth of knowledge he’s picked up during his two decades in the business.
-
Shamai Buckel - The Connector
Shamai brings an infectious love for community, the great outdoors, and quality sustenance to the Buckel Family table. Raised in the Southwest, family, food and gardens have always been paramount. Her role as Connector comes naturally, as she gravitates towards bringing people together over nourishing, farm-fresh meals, delicious wines, good company, and grand ideas. She is not afraid of hard work or getting dirty. She can frequently be found disgorging wine, working in the tasting rooms, meeting with entrepreneurs, planning events, skiing, mountain biking, and shuttling kids and wine around this wondrous state - Colorado.