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Juicy Lucy's

December, 2011

We drove up through Glenwood Canyon, Patrick Campbell’s daughter Arya and I, on the way to Aspen. I knew her as Campbell’s daughter because I had dealt with Patrick and his wines from Laurel Glen in the 1990s, and I had only met her the day before at the Denver airport. We had poured at the Vail trade show; now we were headed to the Aspen show.

The Colorado flows through that narrow rock canyon, and some enterprising engineers managed to build I-70 in parallel. Sometimes it lies on a bench, sometimes it stands in the air on stilts, curving around sheer walls and tunneling through rock, the railroad doing the same on the other side. At the head is blue-collar Glenwood Springs, where Doc Holiday went to his grave and where Teddy Roosevelt stayed at the Hotel Colorado in the summer of 1905.

Glenwood Springs was originally named Defiance, a name that seemed fitting after our day in Vail. Vail is a rarefied town, and we were headed to an even more rarefied town. Glenwood, in contrast, is resolutely without pretence.

I wondered if Glenwood Springs had an Occupy movement. Vail and Aspen certainly did not, that was self-evident. The month before I had poured at a portfolio show in Shepardstown, West Virginia, a college town on the Potomac that felt lost in time—the Antietam Battlefield is just across the river, and the town admirably retains an historic air—until I ran into its Occupiers. There were just two of them, on the lawn of the old town hall, standing in the cold rain, their hands shielding smoking cigarettes, their signs propped up next to them. I came out of the café across the street with coffee in hand, and waved as I drove away. I wondered if what the country was seeing is the equivalent of the burgeoning hippie movement, circa 1965. Would this wave evolve into something like Students for a Democratic Society? Devolve into the Weather Underground? Spin sideways into Haight-Ashbury?

Who knows? But there sure as shit wasn’t a sign of Occupy Wall Street in Aspen, where we got through the police roadblock at the town entrance by showing our knockoff Louis Vuitton bag, provided by our distributor for that purpose. We poured our wares throughout the afternoon at the Hotel Jerome. The Professor was there with young Henri Gaunoux from Meursault. Henri had come to work the harvest in Oregon with the Professor, who said he was the best intern he’d ever had—this despite Henri’s lack of English and the Professor’s dismal French. That did me proud, as I had arranged the internship after the Professor and I first visited Henri’s father Jean-Michel in May.

At the end of the tasting, I said goodbye to Campbell’s daughter, who was staying on. I handed in the Louis Vuitton bag. The Professor wanted to catch up, but said that his buddy Etzel wanted to go to The Little Nell and have a drink of white Burgundy before hitting the road. So I walked with Henri and the Professor up to that swank resort. We entered the lobby, and went by showcases of exotic, wildly expensive furs, and I thought that if the folks from PETA ever saw this they would throw bricks through those glass display cases, they would hack the Nell’s computer system to smithereens, they would firebomb this bastion of the one percent.

We met Etzel and his party in the restaurant lobby. We sat down on overstuffed sofas in front of a big, modern fireplace. Carlton the sommelier, whom I knew from DC, came by with a vast and impressive wine list. Carlton is a passionate young wine professional, and a Mr. Clean. His pate is shaven bare as a baby’s butt—as was his predecessor’s, as is his Little Nell colleague Sabato’s dome. Was this a requirement of the management, a kind of subliminal advertising for those furs? I didn’t ask. Etzel ordered Puligny. The Professor and I discussed our next trip to France.

Then I got out of there. I fled to Glenwood Springs. This was where I had planned to go from the beginning, ever since I signed on for these mountain shows. I had a reservation in dusty downtown Glenwood, under the overpass, right across from the train station. Across the river rose the old Hotel Colorado. I was going to Juicy Lucy’s.

Juicy Lucy’s is a steakhouse saloon. Recently it had a facelift, but so far as I could tell this was mainly to put a wall between the bar and the dinner tables. They had cleaned it up, and I missed the old feeling, but the décor decidedly did not invite fine fur. A guy from PETA could feel pretty good here, until the charred steak arrived.

One of these days Juicy Lucy and its wine list will probably be discovered. One of these days too the grand old paint-peeling Hotel Colorado will be bought by big money and revamped into a highbrow western lodge and spa, its halcyon days reinvented. But so far, these things haven’t happened. So far, the meals at Juicy Lucy’s are simple and good, the help is comprised of young locals whose lack of experience is made up by earnestness, and the wine list is full of gems stored in a temperature-controlled cellar, marked up to retail levels rather than three or four times cost. All of it is so refreshing.

It was eight-thirty at night and zero degrees outside when I arrived. I had to get up at five the next morning. But I had this time. I ordered the elk steak and mushrooms, and for thirty-two dollars a half bottle of 2003 Antoniolo Gattinara. Tera the waitress happily decanted the wine (with air, it was sumptuous). Then, waiting for the elk, I studied the wine list. With a jolt, I saw that they had Jean-Michel Gaunoux 2005 Volnay 1er Clos des Chênes listed at $133! I looked over at the decanter of Nebbiolo. I considered the three-hour drive to the Denver airport the next morning. I debated being reasonable.

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Juicy Lucy's

December, 2011

2011 Harvest Report

October 2011

Travels with the Professor and Mr. Good Life (part II)

July 2011

Travels with the Professor and Mr. Good Life (part I)

June 2011

Roy’s Memoir: To Burgundy and Back Again

May 2011

2010 Harvest Report

October 2010