It’s All About Pressing The Chill Switch | Lifestyle

Dave Aschwanden is a wine lover.

With more passion and love for the wine industry than a wine toast to good health.

But before he became a wine man, he was a construction worker, coach and cross-country skiing enthusiast, and he still is.

About 18 or 19 years ago, Aschwanden was living his dream as a woodworker and furniture maker, plying his trade in a booming housing market.

Then it happened in 2008.

“We all know what happened to the housing industry. Before that it was great, but then it all came crashing down,” he said from his winery outside Cedaredge.

So he needed a job, and probably a career change, and that’s when he got into the wine industry.

“I took a job at a winery because I just needed a job,” he said with a smile.

Like the perfect wine for a fancy dinner, it was an excellent decision for the former Colorado Mesa University Nordic ski coach.

Aschwanden is 55 years old and has been an amateur winemaker for about 20 years. He has always had a passion for wine and the winemaking process.

But when he started working at Woody Creek Cellars down the road in Austin, he knew this was his calling.

The now closed winery was his first introduction to the wine industry and wine making.

“Long story short,” he said with a big grin. “After a few years I became obsessed and possessed, and I realized this was what I wanted.”

Now, some 12 years after he corked his first bottle in his own winery, Aschwanden produces several wines under the name Chill Switch Wines.

As Aschwanden walks around his business at his home on Surface Creek Road northeast of Cedaredge, his love for the wine industry shines through as he talks about the journey that got him to where he is today.

A huge wine rack also serves as an example of his woodworking skills and contains hundreds of bottles of Chill Switch wines and Crag Crest wines.

NAME CHANGE

Here comes an interesting story about how the name Chill Switch came about.

In 2012 he started his winery under the name Crag Crest Wines and he still has a number of those labels left.

He felt it was the perfect name to emphasise the area and his love of the outdoors.

For avid hikers, the name of the impressive Crag Crest hiking trail on Grand Mesa is well known.

But there was a problem.

“I couldn’t believe how much people messed up that name, there were so many different variations,” he said.

Two years later he had had enough and came up with a list of possible name changes.

“I ended up going on the Chill Switch. I really didn’t like it for about six months, then I realized it was hitting all the points I had made,” he said.

Those points? — A name that was easy to say on the phone, a name that people could spell, something that wasn’t already taken, and finally, and most importantly for him, something that appealed to his emotional state.

“It’s different, it’s not traditional. It’s not after a tree, a hill or a rock, a river or a family name.

“I thought long and hard about it and decided it was a different way to stand out. It really speaks to your emotional state and hopefully it’s what you’re looking for at the end of a hard day. You go home and pull this cork out and I hope the wine takes you there,” he said.

Of course, he only laughs when he thinks about his Swiss family name for a few minutes.

“If I had said it over the phone and spelled my last name, it would have been a tough one,” he said.

A NATURAL TALENT PROCESS

At Aschwanden the emphasis is on natural viticulture.

He admits that he tries to do things a little differently.

Whether it’s a headache or an upset stomach, wine isn’t for everyone.

“There’s never an ingredient list for wine, so they’re in the dark. They just think all wine should be the same, so ‘I’m not going to drink wine anymore,’” he said.

People came to him and asked why his wines did not suffer from these negative effects.

“And then I say, ‘I don’t know.’ Because I don’t know what other people are doing, I only know what I’m doing, and I’m trying to make a so-called clean, natural product, and that’s my niche.

“There are no strange additives in this wine.”

His process is crucial.

He built the building that houses his winery and has no climate control for the seasons.

In summer, the temperature in the building can rise to 21 degrees Celsius and in winter to 7 degrees Celsius.

Whether it’s “heat stabilization” or the lower winter temperatures, Aschwanden says it creates a natural process that keeps him from using additives and filters.

He says he enjoys making red wine the most.

“Red wines are kind of my thing, and they’re also a bit more forgiving in natural winemaking.”

FAVORITE WINES?

He doesn’t really pick his favorite wines, but he does say he has a few that sell very well, including his Teroldego, Mourvèdre Petit Verdot and Super Colorado Red.

As for the white wines, he says his Gewurztraminer is selling very well.

Another aspect of his utterly unique focus, surprisingly, is his steadfast approach to using one type of wine barrel.

“I use 100% French oak barrels. It’s not a good or bad decision, it’s just a type choice on my part. I just enjoy the subtlety of it.

“I just find that French oak tastes much more vanilla-buttery,” he said.

TO JUMP IN

Aschwanden smiles when asked to recall the conversation he had with his wife, Christie Aschwanden, executive director of the Grand Mesa Nordic Council, when he decided to go full-time into the wine industry.

“I can’t remember the exact conversation, but she was always enthusiastic about wine, maybe even a little bit more than I was,” he said. “She was just encouraging and supportive. She knew I was passionate about it.”

When asked how much he had invested in his winery, Dave couldn’t really give a total, but he did say that “between 2012 and almost 2017, I didn’t get paid at all. So I worked for free.”

He’s fine with that now too.

“A lot of young people come to me and ask about the financial aspect of it, and I always tell them not to do it for that reason, you have to do it because you can’t think of anything else. It’s a passion,” he said.

At the back of the estate he has a small vineyard of about 0.6 hectares, which he planted as a test plot to see what would grow at 2070 meters altitude.

He readily admits that it requires more maintenance and that he would like to have a larger vineyard and grow more grapes someday. For now, he sources all of his grapes locally, including Palisade.

One thing that helped Dave in working with his viticultural mentor at Woody Creek Cellars, the late Kevin Doyle, was the freedom to experiment.

“He really let me experiment with making different wines, saying, ‘Can I put four (different types of) grapes in here, can I use six?’ And I really learned a lot from that,” he said.

Because of its remote location, wine tastings are by appointment only, which means he travels a lot, visiting events all over Colorado to give wine lovers a chance to unwind.

As for his favorite wine, Aschwanden says it still comes down to his personal passion for good wine.

“I like anything that is well made, wines that are well made and that people are proud of,” he said.

He is also a huge advocate for Colorado wines and has seen the local industry grow and become a major player in the production of great wines.

“I think you’ll find that we’re all making great wines these days,” he said.

As for the future, Aschwanden foresees a period in which he can direct his focus and passion primarily to his best-selling wines.

“I’m making a lot of wines now and I see myself narrowing that down,” he said. “I see myself hopefully getting a reputation for my wines being the strongest and focusing on that.”

As his website says, Aschwanden makes his wines with patience and old-fashioned techniques, and he has no intention of ever changing.

For wine drinkers like himself, it’s all about unwinding at the end of a long day, pouring a crisp white wine or an aromatic red wine and after a quick swirl, it’s time to find the Chill Switch and give it a nudge.