My family and I moved to Colorado in 2014, unaware that it was wine country, what a pleasant surprise. At the time, it was just my husband, Casey, and I. We didn’t know anyone, we didn’t have any family, we set off to see what we could make of ourselves. Casey got to working at the hospital as a nurse and I searched for a job. Through Craigslist I found a winery looking for an entry level Cellar and Grounds worker. Back in Texas, I worked as an EMT and assumed I’d be going back to that after working at the winery, once some jobs opened up in my field. It didn’t take long to realize winemaking is pretty cool and slightly less stressful than working on an ambulance. I also soon find that there was opportunity to move up into winemaking and I figured why not? How many people get to make wine having zero schooling or back ground in the area? I learned on the job and worked up into winemaking.
We had our son in July of 2017, hottest summer since we had moved of course. I worked up until our son was born. I still remember one of our cellar hands asking how long I was going to work while pregnant. I told him “people have been making wine and having babies for thousands of years, I’ll work until he comes.” The shocked response was well worth it. Fast forward to June of 2019 and we welcomed our little girl to the family. Now with two kids, working away from the home was definitely harder. After much prayer and consideration I quit my job at the winery and started wine consulting so I could mostly work from home.
Because I was doing consulting and representing several different supply companies, I set up a booth at the annual VinCo conference. It was there that I ran into one of the winemakers I’ve worked with over the years. When I asked him how things were going, he said something that caught my attention. ‘We’re thinking of selling our property in Grand Junction.’ My response ‘If you’re thinking of selling, we’re thinking of buying.’ It took nearly 6 months to work out all the details, figure out financing, sign a whole lot of paperwork, and now we have our own little piece of the Colorado wine country!