Old Town Cellars Blends Wine with Après

Old Town Cellars (oTc) describes their philosophy as a simple blend of quality wines, authentic mountain town ambiance and a local culture of outdoor enthusiasts and athletes. Rising to meet its local contemporaries like High West and Wasatch Brewery, oTc has become a staple in the Park City community. Every home with a bar cart or liquor cabinet has a bottle of oTc ready to open after a day riding the slopes or biking on the trails, depending on the season. They are Park City’s biggest après go-to.

Besides achieving delicious blends (and some under $20), oTc’s goal is to take the snobbery out of wine and teach Parkites that anyone can enjoy wine. No sommelier needed.

The private label winery has always chosen its grape varietals to achieve genuinely unique and unpretentious wine blends. Currently, the winery focuses on grapes from Paso Robles in California and regions in Oregon like the Umpqua Valley.

The blending and bottling occur in-house, as it did at the old lower-Main Street location.The oTc team is involved with every step of the wine making process. They work with the grape growers or partner with other wineries, and from there the grapes are harvested, crushed, and placed in a tank for inoculation (fermentation). When that process is finished, head wine-maker Charlie Kidd follows the fermentation curves, and the team starts the blending process.

Blending wine allows the creativity to flow at Park City’s favorite winery. Old Town Cellars blends their Chardonnay with Sauvignon Blanc, the likes of which co-founder Stephen Mackay has never seen done before.

This past November marked the exciting release of three new wines. Outlaw Reserve is a cabernet sauvignon combining new world fruit and old world influence, named aft er a band of colorful characters in Park City. Perpetual Pinot is sourced from the Umpqua Valley to rival the wines of Burgundy. Both wines (really all wines from oTc) have their own spin on pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon’s classic silhouettes.

The winery is always thinking and having fun with what will come next. The team toys with ideas like perfecting a sparkling wine and canning their wine (making the delicious elixirs extra adventure-friendly). Old Town Cellars is also looking forward to branching out to other places Parkites love like Moab and Wyoming. You never know what they’re going to blend up next, but you can bet that we’ll be sipping and waiting.

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