Barbara Lawlor, Nederland. In September of 1906, the axe-wielding prohibitionist Carrie Nation, known for her crusade against alcohol by chopping up saloons with a hatchet, headed to Cripple Creek to spread the good word in local bars. When she showed up, the miners and law officials, having been warned of her visit, greeted her with a choice: she could go to jail or get out of town.
They weren’t about to have any disturbances of the peace, nor would they allow their saloons to be shut down. Carrie chose to leave town.
This weekend, 110 years later, Carrie’s great, great, great, great niece, Gussie Walter, is opening the first winery in Nederland. Gussie, demonstrating the same strong-willed, high spirited character of her joint smashing relative, owns, manages, and single handedly produces the wine for Augustina’s, which opened 19 years ago, the first winery in Boulder. In the past week, Gussie, with the help of her husband Jeff, moved her entire operation from North Boulder to her new location in the Tebo Shopping Center.
On Friday, from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Gussie will have 12 of her most popular wines available for tasting, an introduction to the quality and diversity of the wine she has been making for the past 19 years.
After growing up in Indiana, Gussie attended the University of Miama, Florida. She studied oceanography, which changed when she became hooked on geology. She then went on to graduate school at CU. There she studied hard rock ore deposits and worked with isotope dating projects for the United States Geological Survey, where she found herself working in a lab for 11 years.
During this time, she and other fellow geologists were into home brewing and experimenting with the chemical balance of ingredients. It was 1989 and dandelion wine was one of the wines of choice. “It wasn’t very good,” she remembers, saying that only the top third of the flower should be used. “It was labor intensive and the alcohol content was too high.”
Gussie began experimenting with fresh fruit and bottled her creations, creating her own label and bringing the wine to parties, where friends encouraged her to pursue her hobby. During this time, her husband, also a geologist, was killed in Peru, and although she hung in there, she says she was not doing well and needed to shed her old life, find something different, get away from the physical memories.
In 1994, she resigned from her job at the USGS and wrote letters to wineries in New Mexico to see if anyone would hire her. A small winery located between Taos and Santa Fe was looking for someone with a lab background and she fit right in, doing the basic testing for sugar levels, acidity, PH levels, and alcohol content. It was a winery, fruit stand, and apple orchard and Gussie lived in the parsonage next to a church. She rented out her house in Boulder, packed up her cat, and moved to a new life.
“I really liked making wine. New Mexico has the oldest wineries with the traditional harvesting techniques. I hated picking grapes. It is interesting for about 20 minutes and then it is hot, tedious, sticky, bugs all over the place, and hard on the back.”
For two years, Gussie learned all she could about the business part and thought to herself that she could do it. She came back to Boulder to set up her own business, which would be all-involving. It was time for her to come home.
In 1997, she found a small warehouse in North Boulder and with little money, began producing her own wine. Her first decision was the style of wine she wanted to create.
“People expect a certain style from a winery. Mine was an easy drinking wine, slightly lower in alcohol, dry, medium body smoky, spicy reds. I don’t like sweet.”
Gussie began her one-man operation, buying the grapes, pressing them, stemming them, etc. It was basically grunt work, she says, getting dunked in grapes, dive-bombed by wasps, working at night when it was cool, with her smaller equipment that she could handle.
From mid-August to mid-November, as the grapes came to the appropriate ripeness she would buy from the Western Slope, bringing in thousands of pounds of grapes from Palisades and Grand Junction. She worked at three part-time jobs to pay the bills and made Augustina’s wine one barrel at a time. By 1999 she was selling her wine and setting up tents at off-site events, farmer’s markets, art shows and festivals.
She says she never really made enough money to hire anyone to help her. She was also still grieving the death of her husband. When she met Dave Walker, who was grieving the death of his wife, she found support, someone who understood what she was going through. Dave lived in Gilpin County and in 2002, she moved to the mountains and began commuting and traveling all over the state to various venues.
The driving got old. She also wanted her own place, where she could stay put, make her wine and sell it. It was just about impossible to find space in Boulder. Also, when she first opened her winery, she was the only one, now there were many. In Boulder, a winery has to be in a light industrial zone, but the rules were different in Nederland. When she heard that the Very Nice Brewing Co. was approved for the shopping center, she saw an opportunity.
“When I saw the ‘For Lease’ sign in the shopping center last November, I jumped on it and realized I could make it work.”
She began the remodel work, did six months of bottling in one month and began moving in last week with four full barrels and last fall’s inventory. Gussie sees the location as the perfect place to introduce Colorado wines to visitors passing through town, riding the Carousel of Happiness; locals doing their shopping, bringing out of town guests to have a taste of her wine.
Although happy to be on her own, Gussie said there was a moment as she was slipping the key to the warehouse under the door, that she felt sad at leaving the warehouse after 19 years. It was the longest relationship she had ever had with any building. She said leaving the utility sink was hard, but she will most likely learn to love her new one.
Augustina’s will be open from Thursday to Sunday. Gussie plans to have a large birthday party in November for her dear great, great, great, great aunt Carrie, something she has always wanted to do, with many people drinking to life of the historic prohibitionist.
