Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Wine Festival's three days of wine and food tasting end today with a Grand Tasting of more than 500 wines.

This is the second year for the festival that organizer Team Sage Productions hopes will grow into a national-caliber event. One of the winemakers in town this weekend to help ensure that happens is David Hunt, owner of California's Hunt Cellars.

Hunt lives part time in Steamboat Springs and part time in Paso Robles, Calif. Sharing his wines with Steamboat is his way of bringing his two lives together.

Hunt led a Winemaker's Din--ner at Cottonwood Grill on Thursday night and will be serving wine today at the Grand Tasting.

Hunt became a winemaker as a retirement pastime.

"I've never worked harder in my life," he said.

Many people credit Hunt's enhanced palette for wines to his blindness.

"Maybe it's true," he said. "The good Lord gave me a gift."

Hunt will be pouring chardonnays and cabernets at today's Grand Tasting, but wine lovers in the know will want to visit his table for a taste of his cult wine, a Screaming Eagle Shiraz.

"This wine has taken on a life of its own," he said. "It's one of the most expensive wines in the world."

Hunt Cellars only produced 350 cases of the wine. He brought four bottles of it to Steamboat. A bottle costs $140 and rapidly is increasing in value, making it attractive to collectors.

This is Hunt's second year pouring at the Steamboat Wine Festival.

"I want to support this festival," he said.

-- To reach Autumn Phillips call 871-4210

or e-mail aphillips@steamboatpilot.com