Capturing the Brilliance of Place

Tucked below the east face of Battle Rock in the far southwestern corner of Colorado, John Sutcliffe struggles for control of McElmo Canyon. Growing grapes at 5,300 feet above sea level isn’t just a matter of turning sunlight into sugar, but rather also part of his strategy against what he calls a “new wave of settlers bent on remodeling the West into an endless playground.”

More than a decade ago, John and his wife, Emily, purchased a small hay farm that came with water rights dating back to the 1880s. Their original intent was to use the farm as winter range for a small herd of cattle that would be moved to higher pastures on Bureau of Land Management property during the summer. Their plan was to fuel John’s passion for working with livestock and the land, and meet Emily’s desire to deliver babies for women who live in rural places.

However, the bureaucratic process required to maintain grazing permits on public lands soon tried John’s patience. His solution was to combine his earlier experiences of farming in Wales with his knowledge of the fine foods industry that he had gained as a successful restaurateur. John became a grape grower and vintner. With characteristic determination and intensity, he now produces more than a thousand cases of fine wine each year.

John thrives on learning subtle and painstaking lessons from the land. “We haven’t gotten to where we are from our wealth of knowledge and experience,” he deadpans. “Of the 1,500 vines that we planted in 1995, we have fewer than 800 left.” He rails out a litany of calamities, beginning with dishonest nursery owners in California.

At first the Sutcliffes concentrated their plantings along McElmo Creek. “I thought that because our cows went to the lowlands along the creek to deliver their calves that meant the microclimate in those areas might be milder,” John says. “But I was dead wrong. The cold air draining down-canyon from Ute Mountain means that there is on average a nine-degree difference between the high end of my property and the part that is only 120 feet lower. That means that the last frost on the high end is about the 8th of April, and May 9th on the lower.”

John’s on-the-job training and hard work have been shared with Francisco Castillo, an immigrant farmer from northern Mexico. Together they maintain a grueling annual cycle. It starts in the spring, when they begin devoting at least twelve minutes to pruning each of the 8,000 vines that they now have. That is followed by all-night vigils of being prepared at a moment’s notice to ignite smudge pots that provide enough heat to protect the plants from frost. The growing season’s endless chores further include monitoring and maintaining plastic drip lines and periodically adjusting flow rates for each plant to assure optimal growth and sugar content. Enormous bird-proof nets are draped across the vineyards at the onset of fruiting. As harvest nears, John and Francisco thin leaves to allow just the right amount of sunlight on the grapes, and continually test the nutrient content of the leaves and the sugar content of the fruit.

John savors autumn when conditions of “jolly cold nights and warm days give the grapes the acids needed to ripen and have a liveliness in their taste, like an apple with a bit of a snap.” Harvest is completed in a marathon few days. With the help of a dozen more workers, the fruit is picked and carted to stemming and crushing processors. The art and science of bringing out the best the grapes have to offer continues through what seems an endless series of steps before bottling. “There is a constant need for tasting, smelling, and adjusting,” explains John. “You are up to your elbows in the process.”

A Sutcliffe Vineyards label on a bottle of 2002 Merlot reads: “Sun-drenched days and fine red soils make McElmo Canyon a wondrous garden of peaches, apricots, melons, and chiles. Deep in this canyon, between towering sandstone walls, lies Sutcliffe Vineyards. Perhaps we have captured the intensity and brilliance of this place in the color, depth, and complexity of our wine. Grown, produced, and bottled on the property.”

John markets his wine only to a few local distributors and fine restaurants. When asked whether he’s making a profit, he defers the question with “I’ll tell you this, being married to a gynecologist is the key to my success.” He shifts the conversation to the importance of keeping farming and ranching in McElmo Canyon. “This valley has been producing beautiful melons and vegetables for decades,” he says. “The miners in the mountains above here would have starved without this place. But because people no longer value our products, the only bulkhead against the developers is an alliance between the farmers and our community. If we’re not here, then the land will wind up producing nothing but mere playgrounds for the prosperous of our cities. Developers are just like coyotes during calving season, circling and waiting to seize the moment.”

John’s crusade for keeping the land in farming includes retiring development rights on his property. Sutcliffe Vineyards was recently commended by the American Vintners Association for “taking a leading role” in protecting the natural environment. In noting its donation of an agricultural easement, the Durango Herald cited Sutcliffe Vineyards for contributing to a “growing trend in locally based agriculture [that] provides for the continuation of
agricultural and agribusiness uses of the land [while] preventing any future subdivision that would compromise the land’s agricultural values or harm its resident wildlife.

”In a guest commentary for the Denver Post, John wrote: “Just as stewardship is more than simply farming the land, farming is far more than a picturesque backcloth for sprawling homes. It contains the essence of the community and is a vital component in any community’s ability to avoid urban sprawl.”

An intimate sense of place accompanies John in his vineyard. Every row and every plant has a story that he passionately shares. And he proudly expresses the vitality of his community when he tells how Francisco recently paid him cash to purchase his own piece of the vineyard, and a home for his family.

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This is one of many stories from the Four Corners region that were printed in A New Plateau: Sustaining the Lands and Peoples of Canyon Country, edited by Peter Friederici and Rose Houk. This book was a project of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University and Renewing the Countryside, with assistance from the Museum of Northern Arizona. A New Plateau can be purchased at the Renewing the Countryside online bookstore or the Northern Arizona University bookstore, or request it at your local bookstore.

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