Cin! Cin! Cheers to the Colorado vintners whose families transplanted their Italian roots in Colorado soil and today celebrate their ancestors' passion and methods for winemaking.

• Author: Smith, Alta

Someday scientists studying the human genome might discover an Italian gene that codifies the way to make wine. Ancient Greeks knew Italy as the land of wine, and to this day the boot-shaped country maintains its status as the world's largest producer of wine. But whether a gene exists or not, there is no doubt that Italians have spread their penchant for making the beverage around the world through family ties.

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That's no less true in Colorado, where Italians brought family-nurtured winemaking talents when they immigrated here from their homeland. The descendants of four families among those immigrants have turned those winemaking skills into businesses, but telling the story of Colorado winemaking's family connection to Italy must start with just one.

The Balistreris of North Denver are one of the better known families of Italian descent who have been a fixture of family winemaking in Colorado for at least three generations. John Balistreri is now the leader of the clan and the winemaker for JA Balistreri Vineyards at 1946 E. 66th Ave. in Denver city proper.

Balistreri's grandparents moved to Colorado in the 1920s from Sant' Elia, a small town near Palermo, Sicily, but it was Balistreri's uncle, Sonny Alioto (which was Americanized to Elliot), who taught him how to make wine. Wine was part of many meals in the Balistreri household then, but especially on Sundays when Sonny would serve the dry muscat wine he had laced with a little red zinfandel to add color, making it a lovely pink. John Balistreri makes that same muscat today.

"I learned basically everything about winemaking from him," Balistreri recalls of his uncle. "The one thing I remember he really emphasized was to leave the grapes alone and let them do the job. We punched the wine down every day (in the barrels during fermentation) and that's basically what we do today."

Although he's adopted some modern methods in his winemaking, Balistreri still makes his wine one barrel at a time, checking it every day. Each bottle label contains the barrel number and now may also list the specific vineyard from which the grapes came.

One fixture of Italian heritage you'll find at the Balistreris' is that it is very much a family operation. John is the winemaker; his wife, Birdie, works the tasting room along with other office duties; and daughter Julie works closely with her father on marketing and distribution.

And wine, of course, is part of all the family get-togethers.

Julie remembers her uncle making wine in the boiler room of the greenhouse, where the primary fermentation was done before being aged in barrels in a nearby garage.

"We always had the dry muscat before holiday meals or as an aperitif with biscotti or pizzelles," she says. "My great grandmother, whom we called 'Shorty-Gram,' always had an ice-cold decanter of wine in the refrigerator and she would offer a little to family and friends who would stop by."

Large families may be an Italian stereotype, but a Balistreri holiday dinner when Julie was growing up often drew as many as 60 people. Shorty-Gram kept dishes for such occasions in her carnation grading room, the only room large enough for such a crowd.

The Balistreri vineyards (yes, there are wine grapes growing in Denver) are part of a 15-acre property the grandparents settled on and worked, first with truck farming and later adding greenhouses for wholesale cut flowers. The greenhouses are gone now, victims of the high price of energy.

One thing you'll find at Balistreri vineyards that you'll never find at an Italian winery is the system they've developed to keep their two acres of grape vines in Denver productive. The traditional wine grapes that fall under the species "Vitis Vinifera" (European wine grapes) will grow along the Front Range but getting a consistent crop is dicey...