Dining Guide

Wine savvy lives at Catherine Store. Locals crowd the tiny store to talk about awesome old Bordeaux and inexpensive New World finds. Both are welcome discussion at the Wine Prospector at Catherine Store, run by former Wall Street derivatives trader Rhonda Black. It’s a hideout of sorts for wine geeks and budding enthusiasts relieved to have a wine merchant who can combine real expertise with unpretentious commentary on fine wines and artisanal spirits.
A collector for years while building a career on Wall Street, Black relishes the hunt for truly special wines and really great deals. Customers find both at Catherine Store. The wine and liquor store is small, but the store’s off-premise warehouse is huge and holds a king’s ransom of fine wines and hard-to-find spirits. Black describes the store’s strategy this way: “We buy wines that are compelling. Wine can be compelling in one of two ways … it can be of truly compelling quality or it can be a compelling value. We look for both.”
Wine is never “on sale” at Catherine Store; bottles are consistently marked with “the cheapest price I can afford to sell it,” according to Black. The deals continue: Sales tax is the lowest in the valley—just 3.9 percent. Take advantage of the valley-wide home delivery service, and your order may well be taxed at only 2.9 percent. Add to that the 15 percent case discount, available on solid or mix-and-match cases, and you’ve got some of the most competitive prices in the state. The buzz around the valley is “you don’t have to go to Denver anymore.”
“My years of experience buying fine wine allow me to sift through the branding sizzle to evaluate a bottle on the basis of the wine itself,” explains Black, who regularly stays up late into the night reading the latest wine press and talking to producers all over the world. “We buy wine from the inside of the bottle out, not from the label in.”
The old cinder-block building at the corner of Catherine, Colorado, is a work in progress. “We have a real commitment to this place. And we have a real commitment to great wine,” says Black. “If people don’t want to buy some of the greatest wines in the world at really competitive prices from a place that looks like this, then it’s not about the wine. We are all about the wine.”
The Wine Prospector at Catherine Store is on the corner of Highway 82 and Catherine Store Road, between El Jebel and Carbondale. Open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; 970.704.WINE (9463); 888.704.WINE.