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Best Après Ski: Continental Divide Winery

The Continental Divide Winery offers wine blending classes that allow participants to mix up to four varietals and create their own bottles. Susan Gilmore / SGilmore@summitdaily.com |
The Continental Divide Winery offers wine blending classes that allow participants to mix up to four varietals and create their own bottles. Susan Gilmore / SGilmore@summitdaily.com |

 

A great way to cap off the evening, whether after a day of shopping or skiing, is with a refreshing wine in hand. Thankfully the world’s highest-elevation winery, Continental Divide Winery, has a location off Main Street in Breckenridge.

“Our tasting room is located just a one-minute walk from the base of the QuickSilver SuperChair, making Continental Divide’s tasting room a great spot to relax and unwind with a glass of wine after a hard day on the slopes,” Continental Divide Winery co-founder Jeffrey Maltzman said.

Part-time Breckenridge residents and California vintners Jeffrey and Ana Maltzman founded the winery in 2016 with Alma residents Kent Hutchison and Angela Bryan. The winery features the harvest from the Maltzman’s California vineyards as well as local Colorado grapes.

Along with sampling wine, the tasting room offers a unique blending experience. Participants taste four red wine varietals, craft a custom blend from them, and then bottle, cork and label the souvenir.

Those who wish to take home more than that single bottle should sign up for the winery’s wine club. The club has no annual membership fee, and it’s offered at different tiers that allow customization in shipment  size.

The club is a good way to stay on top of new releases, like last year’s limited edition Double Eclipse wine. The blend of six wines was made during the 2017 total solar eclipse and then released during the total lunar eclipse the following year.

More recently, the winery swept the Sunset Magazine International Wine Competition. It won two of the only three gold medals awarded to Colorado wineries in the 2019 contest out of 2,700 entries. The winning wines included the artist series Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon and the artist series Reflection, a Bordeaux-style red blend crafted from merlot, malbec, cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot.

Continental Divide’s Breckenridge tasting room is in Main Street Station at 505 S. Main St. in Breckenridge. Their other tasting room can be found at 331 U.S. Highway 285 in Fairplay.