Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Keenan High. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Keenan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Being an Estate Grown, Bottled, and Produced winery is very difficult. You need to own all of the vineyards, produce all of the wine on site and bottle the wine at your facility. The reason we want to do that and are proud to be fully Estate is that we can control the level of quality from the ground to the glass. Our mission statement is to make world class wines that compete with the very best. To be able to do that, you need to have that attention to detail in every step of the wine making process.

Keenan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I oversee the operations of Colterris Winery and High Country Orchards here in Palisade, Colorado. We are Colorado’s largest Estate Grown, Bottled, and Produced winery, which means we do everything from the ground up in the wine making process. We grow all the grapes, produce and bottle all of the wine on site here. For HCO, we supply peaches to Kroger and Whole Foods all over Colorado and have been for 20 years. My passion is what I do as there is no better feeling than seeing another person enjoy the “fruits” of your labor. Whether it be the complexities of our award winning wines, or the dripping sweetness of our tree ripened peaches, that is where my passion lies. We are currently in process of expanding Colterris by adding a wine artifact museum in downtown Palisade that will house 16,000+ pieces of wine memorabilia. This large addition has added a 3rd tasting room, banquet room with kitchen, and inside museum space that gives us a whole new avenue for entertainment in wine country.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

There are two main areas we focus on at Colterris. Making the highest quality wine possible and giving our customers the greatest experience at our locations. This focus on the experience adds to all aspects of the business. Creating a beautiful environment where everything is tidy, beautiful, and classy, enhances all areas. This attracts customers who have similar values and expectations.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

Ecommerce in Wine is a very interesting case study. The most obvious issue is that wine is alcohol and shipping alcohol has its own difficulties with all of the laws associated not only from state to state, but from county to county. Therefore, most well known ecommerce platforms tend to stay an arms length from selling alcohol.
Putting those issues aside, wine is a very subjective product. There are millions of variables that change the taste and complexities of specific wines and thus we all have tasting rooms for people to come to their own conclusions on the wines. Now trying to sell this online is one struggle all wineries are trying to come up with a solution for. Nothing you do online will compete with the experience of trying the wine itself. Most ecommerce sales are repeat customers who have already been to the winery or had the wine before, not first time buyers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.colterris.com
• Instagram: @colterriswines
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ColterrisWines/