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AAA Colorado's Wine Train
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New Spring Departures Announced:
April 3 & 17, 2009
3 Days from: $685*
Day 1: Board an Amtrak train at Union Station in Denver, departing for Grand Junction and Colorado's wine country. Enjoy onboard entertainment while traveling through the majestic Rocky Mountains. Stay two nights at a Grand Junction hotel, with a continental breakfast daily.
Day 2: You will spend Saturday visiting several wineries in the Grand Junction area, learning about the local wine and food pairing. Evening at your leisure.
Day 3: Breakfast at the Prehistoric Dinosaur Museum then take a short tour of the Colorado National Monument. Visit one more winery before heading back to Denver on a luxury motorcoach, where a box lunch will be served.
Special Wine Train Package will also include:
A continental breakfast at the Union Station, day of departure.
Two nights hotel accommodations in Grand Junction, with breakfast each day.
Visits to several Wineries in Colorado's Wine Country, all transportation included.
A luxury motor coach ride back to Denver including a box lunch.
*Price is per person, double occupancy, space limited, some restrictions may apply. All shuttle service and gratuities are included in this activity-packed weekend journey.
As seen in EnCompassMarch / April 2006
Wine Train delivers relaxing, tasty weekend
The expectation levels were definitely high—a train trip through the Colorado Rockies and wine tastings at eight Grand Junction vintners. Promised bonuses included jazz on the train, talks from wine experts and learning about pairing food with wine.Would the weekend live up to the hype?
At Denver's Union Station, parking and train check in were surprisingly easy. The wait to board was filled with a modest continental breakfast and greetings from the trip hosts: AAA Colorado, the Grand Junction Visitor & Convention Bureau and Amtrak.
When my wife and I boarded, we were impressed with the comfortable seats and substantial leg room. In today's busy travel world, we had forgotten that the enjoyment of the journey should be a part of any trip. That enjoyment was reinforced en route as we marveled at the scenery, listened to the live band (not really jazz), learned about wine from two vintners, and conversed with members of our group.
The group included nearly every adult age range, married and single. Judith and Sandy, sisters in their early 40s, were celebrating Judith's birthday. “We left our husbands behind,” Sandy said with a twinkle in her eye. “Next year, we want to bring our daughters.”
The train arrived in Grand Junction on Friday afternoon, giving everyone a chance to explore. Nestled near 11,000-foot Grand Mesa and the 7,500-foot Book Cliffs, Grand Junction is a peaceful community of 88,000 with a vibrant downtown.
Drier and warmer than Denver, the area has a climate and soil composition ideal for growing grapes. In the early 1900s there was a thriving wine industry, but Prohibition ended that and the vines were replaced with fruit trees. Vines returned in the 1960s, but it wasn't until the late 1980s/early 1990s that the industry took off again.
Today, 16 wineries dot the region. As part of the tour, small vans shuttled us to four wineries on Saturday, four on Sunday, providing a great snapshot of the diversity of wineries, and a good feel for the countryside.
Each winery offered something different, from its wine and ambiance, to its food pairings and tours. At one stop we tasted different grapes off the vine; at another we saw bottling and labeling; at a third we learned about the chemistry of wine. Throughout, we sampled surprisingly good wines while admiring the dramatic southwestern scenery.
Did the trip live up to its advertising?
It definitely did for me, my wife and every person we talked to. Taken altogether, it made for a fascinating, relaxing, fun — and tasty—weekend.
— Jeff Miller
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