In the latest chapter of “a wine story told by craft beer makers,” Odell Brewing Company has opened the OBC Wine Project Taproom — a 2,000 sq. ft. winery and taproom adjacent to the company’s Fort Collins production facility.
The taproom officially opened May 10, one year after the launch of the OBC Wine Project’s first run of canned wines.
“For over 30 years, we’ve been in the craft beer business, and we’ve learned a few things about fermentation,” Alex Kayne, Odell’s director of marketing, told Brewbound. “The wine project was an opportunity to expand [our] community and to recognize that there are folks that can’t enjoy beer or choose not to, and we wanted our space to be inclusive of different kinds of palates and different kinds of preferences.”
Odell first announced its venture into wine in August 2019, but immediately faced delays in opening the on-site space due to COVID-19. The company decided to take the extra time to push for further experimentation and testing. That allowed the company to round out its product selection and offer 10 different package SKUs during the taproom’s grand opening.
The winery’s taproom features eight taps — four dedicated to small batch and experimental wines — and a number of limited bottle releases, exclusive to the winery. The taproom also offers canned wines, including the original four releases — a Red Blend, a White Pinot Gris Blend, a Rosé, and a Rosé with bubbles. In 2020, off-premise dollar sales of canned wines increased sales 62%, according to NielsenIQ.
“From the beginning, we have embraced a pilot brewing system as a really important component of our research and development. And we love the idea that our wine taproom could have that same spirit and have small-batch wines and experimental blends and experimental techniques,” Kayne said.
“We like the idea of bringing the spirit of craft beer, the spirit of innovation, of chasing new and interesting flavor profiles and fermentation techniques, and to bring some of that spirit to the wine industry,” he continued.
Among the featured experimental wines is a skin-contact white wine (or orange wine), aged in previously used oak barrels for Odell’s raspberry and cherry sour ale, Friek. The combination, which winemaker Travis Green calls a “wild wine,” is a metaphor for Odell’s attempt to bridge the gap between winemaking and beer.
“You wouldn’t believe how much time we spend talking about a tasting room versus a taproom, because getting the language and terminology right was important to us,” Kayne said of the decision to call the new space a taproom. Even the branding of the OBC Wine Project pays homage to Odell’s craft beer roots, showing the brand’s leaf logo sprouting roots out of the bottom.
“What we’re nodding to in that moment is that this is the Odell that you know, but it’s being presented and represented in a different way,” Kayne said.
Part of Odell’s brewing and winery overlap is ingredient sourcing. When sourcing grapes, Odell is “unbound by geography,” and open to exploring farms outside of its home state of Colorado, Kayne said. Odell has formed relationships with vineyards in Oregon and Washington, including Silverton, Oregon-based Goschie Farms, which provides both hops and white wine grapes to the brewery.
“We believe that great wine can come from different appellations and climates,” Green said in a press release. “Working with local farmers is just as exciting as chasing the harvest with our vineyards in the Pacific Northwest.”
The OBC Wine Project isn’t the company’s only foray outside of beer. Last fall, it launched Allkind Hard Kombucha, a gluten-free, organic offering fermented with a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) and made shelf stable through a proprietary lab-supported process.
The company is also continuing to expand the presence of its traditional offering. Last month, Odell opened Sloan’s Lake Brewhouse and Pizzeria, the brewery’s second Denver location, featuring 16 taps, a 10-barrel pilot brewhouse, and a pizza kitchen.