Aspen Peak - Niche Media - Aspen living at its peak
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/417540
Aspen boasts more master sommeliers per capita than any other city in the US. Journalist Douglas Brown sits down at The Little Nell with legendary sommelier emeritus Jay Fletcher and his haute-shot protégé Carlton McCoy to discuss how a little hotel far from wine country became "terroir-zero" for wine lovers worldwide. VENI VIDI vino H photography by billy rood ere in the private world of sommeliers, beneath The Little Nell hotel, bottles line the walls and pack shelves, graffiti covers the ceiling, a leg of Spanish ham sits on a stand, and a $43,000 bottle of 1967 Burgundy lurks among younger Burgundies held for aging in the makeshift "attic" within the dim cellar. "This is like heaven," says Nick Barb, one of The Nell's two sommeliers, cradling the $43,000 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (the most expensive bottle at The Nell). "We are up and down the steps, and in this room, constantly." Sometimes, too, are patrons and wine maniacs, who find themselves in the no-frills cel- lar after hours, sipping, nibbling, and talking Pinot Noir and Riesling with The Nell's sommeliers, sur- rounded by their cache of 20,000 bottles. This heaven is no granite-arched, oak-paneled, bar-f lanked, chandelier-lit, cozy grotto, the kind of atmospheric wine temple that commandeers the basements of houses up and down the Roaring Fork Valley. It is, however, one of the finest wine cellars in the United States. Few contain as many exquisite bottles, and none ref lect the wine savvy of a pan- theon of master sommeliers. For about 20 years, different master sommeliers have lorded over The Nell's cellar. "I have to fight to get anything here because the majority of the great Burgundy [in Colorado] goes to The Nell," says Brett Zimmerman, a master somme- lier and owner of Boulder Wine Merchants, a fine wine shop in Boulder. "The Nell makes a difference. So many restaurants aren't willing to take that plunge. It's an international wine list. They aren't just stumbling along." When it opened in 1989, The Nell wasn't gunning for wine stardom. Good luck growing wine grapes (and hatching a fertile wine culture) at 8,000 feet. But just four years after guests began booking rooms at the base of Aspen Mountain and dining in The Nell's restaurant—now called Element 47—things began to change. And those changes are largely to do with a man named Jay Fletcher.