Marianne Walter is also known as “Gussie,” after her resemblance to the tennis player Gussie Moran. This resemblance is something that caught her dad’s attention when she was a little girl, and the name stuck.
She originally started out as a geologist on her career path. She went to graduate school here in Colorado and finished with her master’s degree, after which she started working for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Denver. After a while, though, for personal reasons, she decided to take a buyout in 1995, and she started focusing her attention on homemade wine.
Making wine at home was already a hobby of Walter’s, so she took a job as an apprentice winemaker in a small winery in New Mexico. Because it was a small winery, she got to do everything from picking the grapes to driving the tractor to learning about bottling. However, they mainly needed someone with a chemistry background to put their lab together and write a lab notebook for the company, and her chemistry minor made her perfect for the job. It was such a fun job for her that when she came back to Colorado, she decided to start her own winery. She started putting it together in 1996 before officially getting her permit and opening in 1997.
The business started with one room, a single barrel, and a couple of manual pieces of equipment. On top of running this small business, Walter was still working other part-time jobs with wineries in order to finance everything on her own. She decided to name her winery Augustina’s Winery after a “pretty version” of her nickname, which separated her from the other wineries in Colorado that typically named themselves after geographical places.
Walter prides herself on the low-key feeling of the winery, as she feels that drinking and tasting wine should be fun and it shouldn’t be something that people should be put off by because they feel they aren’t knowledgeable enough about wine. Most of her wine is made for easy drinking, and the majority of her wines are not aged for more than one to four or five years. She also prides herself on focusing primarily on table wines (meaning that the alcohol content of her wine is typically between 7 and 14 percent) because it gives her a lot of leeway to play around with the wine.
She primarily focuses on Colorado- grown wines, she always tries new blends, and she likes being able to create the same styles of wines from different ingredients so that she can be flexible in what she is able to use in her business. Aside from one part-time employee that works in the tasting room on Saturdays, Walter runs the business all by herself.
About two years ago, in 2020, there was a massive freeze in the first week of October that killed the grapevines all the way down to the ground. While this did not result in the death of the roots, the vines were all killed in the process. As a result of this freeze, many of the vineyards that Walter worked with gave up growing completely, sold, or replanted depending on the level of damage.
Last year, in 2021, they were only able to harvest 20 percent of the total growth of vines. At this point, Walter is attempting to make new contracts with vineyards. On top of that, she is currently struggling to get bottles, as prices have doubled and only one style of bottle was produced frequently last year by the company she works with.
Despite all of this, she loves her business and will keep it going as long as she is able to. If she were to somehow run out of her own wine, her license allows her to bring in other wines from Colorado businesses such as Snowy Peaks and sell them. That being said, she prides herself on being able to produce and sell her own wine, and she plans on taking everything one year at a time.
Her favorite part of the business is harvest season – actually making the wine. Despite how much work it can take, she takes pride in the wines that she makes and is honored to see people come in, enjoy her wine, and see the pleasant interaction amongst people who are genuinely happy to be there. She wants people to be able to enjoy wine regardless of how much knowledge they have of it, and her low- key style makes her winery very special.
Augustina’s Winery can be found at 20 East Lakeview Drive, #103 in Nederland. You can find out more about the business by calling 303-520-4871, by emailing augustinaswinery@gmail.com, or by going to their website at www.augustinaswinery.com.
Sponsored by the Town of Nederland, with funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.
