The front-end loader cruises through the airy warehouse, stacking 60-gallon casks of aging wine to the ceiling. A dozen workers stir, sweep and shovel as several dogs trot among the gleaming vats.
“You won’t see any Tuscan facades here,” said Ben Parsons, whose Infinite Monkey Theorem winery in Denver’s industrial River North neighborhood is booming on a mission to redefine wine drinking. “Our winery runs on that front-end loader.”
While the heavy lifting is important, the newest weapon in Parsons’ oenological crusade is a fancy gizmo in the middle of his 30,000-square-foot winery. The automated canning machine — from Boulder’s Wild Goose Engineering, a canning juggernaut that designs custom equipment for the exploding and suddenly can-crazed craft-beer industry — is a game changer for Parsons.
The machine fills 45 cans a minute. The old machine filled four cans a minute. A formerly two-day job funneling 220 gallons into sleek cans now takes less than two hours.
“It’s cool to watch this thing work,” said Parsons, showing off the various functions of the machine. In January, Parsons will release 187-milliliter cans and begin distributing his canned wine nationally.
Yes, canned wine. It’s time for wine to abandon the pinkie-pointing, snifter-sipping crowd and follow the path of beer into ballparks, concerts, nightclubs and campgrounds, Parsons said. The Brit gets fired up when he talks about changing the perspective on wine, leaning into a rant berating the oenophile stuffiness that too many vintners have cultivated alongside their grapes.
“We’ve always been about doing things differently,” he said of his 5-year-old winery. “We are located in a city — in an industrial part of a city — not out in the country. We want to tell the truth about wine. Making wine is a gritty process. There’s nothing particularly romantic about making wine. We want to break down the barriers to wine. We want to make it accessible. That’s what the can does. It makes wine an option for everyone and everywhere. We are stripping away the pretense.”
Parsons’ Infinite Monkey Theorem is part of an explosion of urban wineries along the Front Range. From Fort Collins to south Denver, there are more than 40 wineries, with at least seven in downtown Denver. (There are a little more than 100 statewide.) That’s more wineries than there are in Colorado’s wine country of Grand Junction, Palisade and Montrose-Delta counties. The Front Range in the 2012-13 season became the state’s leading wine producer, churning out 583,000 liters, a seasonal increase of 119,000 liters. That bettered, for the first time, the wine output of the Grand Valley, which made 550,000 liters in 2012-13.
The can — that same aluminum container that put Lyons’ Oskar Blues Brewery on the map a decade ago when it, gasp, canned its craft beer, sparking a revolution that today sees nearly every craft brewer canning its elixirs — is the key to Parsons’ push to elevate wine.
Parsons isn’t stopping at the can, which comprises nearly a third of his revenue with a red, a white and a moscato. He’s putting his Palisade-fruited reds and whites in kegs. All seven Snooze eateries boast Infinite Monkey Theorem wine on tap. More restaurants are lining up.
Parsons reaches into a crate and pulls out a bulbous plastic tube that is not unlike a buoy. The recyclable containers will soon replace the heavy stainless kegs that he ships across the state and back.
“More efficient and more sustainable,” he said.
Parsons hopes to begin kegging other wineries’ product. But that would require either a modification of his winery license or a change in Colorado law that would allow him to package another company’s vino. He’s going for the law change — and he has enlisted Dave Reitz, an alcohol-law consultant and Colorado’s former director of liquor enforcement, to lobby lawmakers.
Reitz feels confident.
“My experience in Colorado is that our legislature has always been very receptive to helping our alcohol-and-beverage industry, especially if it’s a homegrown product,” he said. “They want them to have the most options available to be a successful business.”
The legislative push is yet another example of Parsons’ “pushing the envelope and finding creative ways to market wine,” said Doug Caskey, the aptly named executive director of the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board.
“He may not be the first to put wine in a keg, but he’s been influential at doing it and trying to open up new opportunities for the wine industry both legislatively and logistically,” Caskey said. “I think some of his innovations have been a really big step for the wine industry.”
Parsons — who launched Infinite Monkey Theorem from a back alley off Santa Fe Drive in 2008 after scouring the country for used winery equipment — is pushing for even more growth. In 2008, he sold 1,800 cases of bottled wine. Last year, he sold 15,000 cases. Soon, he expects to hit his winery’s capacity of 25,000 cases.
“The can will grow that number exponentially,” he said.
Since moving into the massive warehouse in River North 18 months ago, he has broadened his plan. His wine-tasting room now accounts for almost a third of his revenue, so he’s expanding that. He’s applying to open a brewpub on an adjacent lot, where today the chef at north Denver’s Old Major grows vegetables next to compost heaps steaming with grape seeds, stems and coffee-bean husks from the down-the-street Novo roastery.
Also, he has plans for a rooftop deck, an outside bar and a host of events at his spacious spread. He hosted several hundred revelers at the recent Pro Challenge post-bicycle-race party.
No, this was not all part of the original plan for the Australia-trained winemaker who moved to Palisade in 2001 to work at Canyon Wine Cellars. The can, the kegs, the bar, the brewery, the hosting of events “all just evolved over time,” he said.
“Everything always seemed like a good idea, but I never really envisioned how well people would embrace it,” he said. “This has all been beyond my wildest dreams.”
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jasontblevins
Colorado made 1.27 million liters of wine in 2012-13, pushing the state’s share of the national wine market past 2 percent for the first time.
