It’s Good to be Kingman
By Erin Vanderberg, Editor
Two years ago, Park Hill’s Doug & Karen Kingman, who live at 23rd and Fairfax, bought 10 acres on the western slope with a vision of grapevines dancing in their head. That vision evolved, over trial and time, into Kingman Winery, an urban winery located in Globeville.
“When you come in here you go to a different place,” said Doug of their warehouse winery location off of Washington Street.
The winery is open weekends for tastings, and the occasional weeknight for special events. Karen manages the tasting counter in the front of the house, while Doug keeps up with operations in the back.
Last year, their efforts yielded a Best of the Fest award at the Colorado Mountain Winefest in Palisade for their Cabernet Sauvignon. Personally, I would give the award to their unfiltered 2012 Zinfandel, but supplies are limited.
The inspiration behind Kingman Winery was simply their love of wine and wine culture, which took hold during visits to northern California wine country. Doug works for a biopharmaceutical manufacturer in Longmont, and traveled to San Francisco frequently on business. Karen, a human resources professional for an accounting firm in Denver, would travel along. Together, they explored the Napa and Sonoma vineyards.
Later down the road, while visiting Doug’s family in Cortez, they met vintner Guy Drew who, like the Kingmans, has a passion for wine. Guy built his winery from the ground up, learning as he went.
“We thought, ‘If he can do it, we can do it,’” said Doug, so they started experimenting with wine kits. “Karen immediately established herself as quality control,” Doug quipped.
Land on the western slope came next; ten acres on A ½ Road outside of Palisade. They would drive up every weekend to work on the barn and get ready to plant grapes. Come harvest, they bought local grapes and made wine with just two tanks, a press, a corker, a filler, a foiler and lots of help from their family and friends.
“We were pretty grassroots then,” said Karen.
Nevertheless, their initial efforts yielded 450 cases of wine. At that point, they started to look ahead to selling their wine and having a tasting room; only to discover that growing grapes on the land was a more expensive proposition than they initially imagined and their rural location wasn’t ideal for a tasting room.
“We had learned that if we were going to grow grapes, we’d need a lot of money,” said Doug. “Kinda like spreading five dollar bills all over [the ground] and mulching it in.”
They sold their property in 2012 and set up shop at their current location. This year, Doug has increased production by more than 50 percent; planning for 1,200 cases of 2012 wine. With his mechanical engineering background, he has created a remarkable assembly line for making wine. He visits his tanks each morning before he goes to work, and again in the evening on his way back home.
While the industrial warehouse district may seem an odd place for such an earthy process, the Kingman Winery is a popular spot along the Front Range Winery Trail, with Balestreri Vineyards just a few blocks over and Spero Winery less than four miles to the west.
“Our competition is not each other,” said Doug of his fellow winemakers in the city. “Just two percent of the wine sold in the state is from Colorado grapes.”
It’s one thing to make the wine, the Kingmans have also learned to brand it, showcase it at festivals, and sell it to stores and, soon, Doug hopes, restaurants. Doug currently has Kingman Wines in 12 stores in the state, including Grape Expectations on Kearney. Groupons have been a useful aid in bringing new people to them. The winery is also popular with locavores.
For all the hard work they put into the place, the Kingmans don’t seem to be complaining.
“We wanted to have things to do when we retired,” said Doug. “With wine, there is always a new problem to consider and not one answer. It’s a romance with the grapes, and there is also this wonderful people side to it. This is what we want to do for as long as we can stand up.”
The Kingman Winery is located at 800 E. 64th Avenue. Their tasting room is open weekends from noon to 5 p.m. For more information, visit kingmanwine.com.