Bootlegging on Trout Creek

(1995: excerpted from Faster Horses, Younger Women, Older Whiskey)

Routt County Fair was the first to hold a wine competition. It was launched at the 1975 Fair, picked up by Moffat County four or five years later and introduced at the Colorado State Fair in 1981.

Doris Knott relished early competition with Don Lorenz and Bob Gleason. She claims she “runs a wine factory,” making as much as 40 gallons a summer: clover, dandelion, beet, kiwi, persimmon and even pea pod. Dan, her husband of 57 years, says the long and the short of it is, “Grandma is a bootlegger.”

John Marshall judged the first competition at the State Fair and Doris, who doesn’t drink wine, brought home the Best of Show ribbon. At that time it was illegal to transport any kind of alcoholic beverage, so it was no surprise when state law enforcement officers call the Extension Office to find out how Doris’ wine got from Hayden to the State Fair. Shirley Portouw said she didn’t have the faintest idea, it must have walked, and hung up on them.

According to Doris, getting a ribbon from Marshall is a real honor because he doesn’t like sweet wines and the only way she could win was on “clarity.” She got a kick out of watching him use the Grand Champion bread to clear his palate and still smiles about the days when the Hayden ladies would polish off the uncorked bottles.

Wine tasting out at the ranch has been the cause of several cars ending up in the borrow pit but no fatalities. Once, when a local packrat began stealing cakes of kitchen soap, the Knotts baited a trap with berry mash. Doris says there’s a lesson for everyone in the fact that the rat could not be caught until the night he got drunk on chokecherry pulp.