About Us

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We balance art, science, & patience to produce nuanced wines of elegance, balance, & depth.

Winery

Blake and Tracy Eliasson have been handcrafting elegant, food-friendly wines from 100% Colorado Grown Grapes since 2007. With an uncompromising commitment to quality, and winemaking techniques influenced by winemakers in Italy and France, their wines showcase the unique terroir of Colorado’s high altitude vineyards. By waiting until 2009 to release their first wines Settembre Cellars laid a foundation that allows for significant bottle aging prior to release and demonstrates that Colorado can produce nuanced wines of elegance, balance, and depth.

Story

Owners Blake & Tracy fell in love eating & drinking Italian food & wine. We made homemade pasta and basil pesto on our second date. We were married in September & honeymooned in Italy. Settembre is Italian for September, a name that honors these influences.

Owners

Blake Eliasson

Winemaker

Blake Eliasson

Winemaker

Settembre Cellars was founded in 2007 by winemaker Blake Eliasson. Since 2007 Blake has made the move from full-time engineer to full-time winemaker, added a Graduate Certificate in Enology & Viticulture from UC Davis to his PhD in Electrical Engineering, and immersed himself into life as a winery owner. Blake finds winemaking to be a perfect mix of science and nature and has developed a winemaking style that employs his background in measurement science.

Tracy Eliasson

Business Development

Tracy Eliasson

Business Development

Tracy also has a background in engineering with degrees in both Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and works full time in that field. With a passion for image processing Tracy has fun with winery graphic design and also lends a hand with crush, bottling, labeling, and of course, barrel tastings.

Owners

Blake Eliasson

Winemaker

Settembre Cellars was founded in 2007 by winemaker Blake Eliasson. Since 2007 Blake has made the move from full-time engineer to full-time winemake

Tracy Eliasson

Business Development

Tracy also has a background in engineering with degrees in both Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and works full time in that field. With a pas

Winemaking

Enology is the science winemaking. Part art and part science, the study of wine is a passion for Settembre winemaker Blake. With a Certificate in Enology and Viticulture from UC Davis in California, in addition to his PhD in Electrical Engineering, Blake carefully measures and monitors his wine, using a combination of scientific and sensory methods to constantly understand its evolving state. Settembre Cellars strives to craft exquisite wines in a manner that supports a Colorado grape in reaching its inherent potential while letting the vine's seasonal story develop and be expressed. Fermentation in stainless steel tanks allows us to delay press and fully translate a grape’s place to bottle (extended maceration is virtually unheard of in wineries where quick rotation of tanks is demanded by economic influences). French oak barrels are used to achieve an elegant integration of oak and wine. Our wines are unfiltered and bottle-aged prior to release, allowing the wine to properly develop first.

 


Colorado Grapes

We've used 100% Colorado Grapes for every vintage. Sourcing from out of state is often easier, and more affordable, but we are commited to Colorado. We believe Colorado Grapes can yield world class wines, & we aim to be among the group of wineries that demonstrate it.

The Grapes Call the Shots

With one stainless tank per harvest the grapes call the shots, not fermentation logistics.

Hand Sort

Not once, but twice. Only the best clusters reach the crusher destemmer and once crushed the jacks are removed. We work at a slower pace (hours per ton, not tons per hour during crush) but are convinced the attention to detail at this step is important to our final goals.

 


Bucket Brigade

Rudimentary? Perhaps, but also the absolute gentlest way to move crushed grapes to the fermentation tank.

Stainless Steel & French Oak

Fermentations take place in stainelss steel or French Oak barrel to avoid leaching and scalping from plastics.

Extended Maceration

Press is delayed, often for up to 2 months, to allow structure and a sense of place to be reflected in the bottle.

 


Gentle Press

A small, and extremely gentle, stainless steel press extracts only the finest free-run and first pressings from the grapes.

French Oak Barrels

With a precise target of elegance & finesse, new French Oak barrels are purchased each year to ferment the Chardonnay and then used to age the red wines.

Patience

Our wines are unfiltered, rather time & patience are used to clarify wines & ensure the nuance makes it into the bottle.

 


Science

Our motto, use science to measure and understand the continual evolution of wine in order to guide the timing of traditional winemaking techniques.

Cork

Our wines are bottled with top of the line, extra long, premium cork closure. Not only renewable & biodegradable cork allows a wine to evolve in the cellar.

Bottle Age

No wine before its time; we bottle age our wines prior to release.

 

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Settembre Cellars

© 2007-2023 Settembre Cellars LLC. All rights reserved. Legal & privacy notice.

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