Meet the Artisans Leading the New Age of Colorado Wine

“No grapes left behind” is the mantra at Kaibab Sauvage and Patric Matysiewski’s year-old Palisade winery, Sauvage Spectrum. For several years, Sauvage (the man), who grows and sells grapes to 26 wineries in Colorado and beyond, would gift his surplus to Matysiewski, formerly of Carboy Winery and the Infinite Monkey Theorem. Matysiewski eagerly turned that fruit into experimental pétillant naturels (aka pét-nats), those trendy natural sparklers that are carbonated in the bottle. Every batch he made with Sauvage’s grapes tasted better than the last. In early 2019, the duo met at Carboy’s Breckenridge outpost to sample a 2018 vintage, and both were blown away by the wine’s aromatic nose, balanced acidity, and playful bubbles. It was love at first sip—and it led to the birth of their official partnership.

In March 2020, Sauvage and Matysiewski opened a 5,000-square-foot winery on Sauvage’s 75-acre farm, Colorado Vineyard Specialists (pictured above). There, they craft wines from grape varieties not typically grown in Colorado, such as Italian Teroldego and French Roussanne. They also insist on using every drop of juice they harvest, creating multivarietal pét-nats, easy-to-sip red blends, and rich single-varietal whites. Right now, Sauvage’s still wines in all hues, sparklers, and, of course, a pét-nat are available at local retailers, and a canned piquette—a 5.7 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) effervescent wine that’s the first of its kind to be produced in the state—will be on the market this spring. “We’re not going to make a California Cabernet or Oregon Pinot Noir,” Sauvage says. “I really want to have our own signature wine—a style that’s just Colorado.”