Congratulations to Chris Dunaway of Element 47, MICHELIN Guide Colorado 2024 Sommelier of the Year winner, presented in partnership with Franciacorta!
The wine program at the iconic One MICHELIN Key The Little Nell laid its foundation in 1989, and since 2015, Wine Director Chris Dunaway has continued to curate the selection with expertise and care. The Little Nell houses restaurant Element 47, and the entire collection contains an impressive 20,000 bottles, which includes both timeless classics and emerging stars from lesser known wine regions.
How were you introduced to the world of wine?
Where I grew up in Kentucky, we didn't have access to a lot of fine and rare wine. My older siblings started drinking wine at university, so we started enjoying wine at the dinner table, and that really transformed the whole dining experience. It brought out stories that we had long forgotten. It made us all vulnerable in all the best ways, and it fostered this convivial spirit.
My grandfather grew this garden in his backyard, and he had an abundance of produce that they would harvest, and that's what the family lived off of growing up. He grew Maréchal Foch and Concord grape vines in his backyard. They were immigrants that came over from Germany just before the war took off. They had a recipe for making wine that required a lot of chapitalization, so a lot of added sugar. The way they were aging them was very interesting as well. It would be a barrel that was stored in a tool shed, and it was exposed to the ravages of the continental summer. So, you got this robust, powerful, oxidized, and invariably sweet wine that resembled Madeira, and that was really cool.
That started leading me down the path of studying wine. I'd done pre-med in college with intentions of going to medical or dental school, and it just really didn't resonate with me at the time. I had picked up Karen MacNeil's Wine Bible, and dove in. The way that she wrote made wine such an approachable topic, and really transported you to these places that it's produced in, and that inspired me to study it deeper.
I ended up in New York City. I took classes through the American Sommelier Association. From there, I worked at a retail wine store in Montclair, New Jersey called Amanti Vino, where I really cut my teeth and was exposed to an extraordinary amount of great wine. And then I worked at Corkbuzz Wine Studio in Union Square for a master sommelier named Laura Maniec, who was incredibly influential on my development. She really carved out a bunch of time for her entire staff. Trained us up very well, and then I spent a little over a year working for Michael Madrigale and Daniel Johnnes at Bar Boulud and Boulud Sud in the city, before coming here in 2015.
What are you drinking these days?
I'm on the Master Sommelier path, and one of the best things is that it gives you more of an all-encompassing perspective of the wine world. What is a lot of fun and rewarding is that you seek out wines from the regions that you study.
I drank some Irouléguy last week. I was just studying southwest France, so I dug into that. There's one orange wine in particular that I do enjoy that I was able to find. It was Paolo Bea Santa Chiara, which is a beautiful wine. So, I'll seek out the esoteric.
It's fun to find these wines that are off the beaten path, but then I'll check in with some of the classics as well. I'm a big Rhone fan, and my sommeliers would laugh if they heard me say that because it's a huge understatement. I am obsessed with Syrah because of its unique character. That smoky, gamey character is intoxicating to me, and it takes me back home. My dad is a massive barbecue guy. He's a maestro on the smoker, and whenever we come home, he tries to cook up some ribs or brisket. I'll try to check in with the classics and pair them with cuisine at home, so Syrah is like magic with that.
I read Vinous Media a lot. They do an incredible job of highlighting particular areas in the world of wine, in addition to the classics, that are really extraordinary. They just came out with an article on Fonte Canale, and it's one of the world's greatest white wines.
What's your ideal meal and pairing?
We close the hotel twice a year for the off-season, and we do construction projects, brainstorming sessions, and travel. We’re currently planning a trip to Piedmont. I've never been in November during truffle season, and it's been a dream ever since I read about it. It's this incredibly intense ingredient that's unique to this area that's perfect with these wines, and wines of perfect provenance with age like that are in abundance in Piedmont.
So, the perfect pairing right now is a mushroom risotto with egg on top and an abundance of truffle with a perfectly aged Barolo. If there's white Burgundy involved as well, excellent.
What’s your criteria for adding a new wine to your list?
The questions that I ask that are really important, are, "is this wine being produced with sustainable farming techniques?" That's never been more important. "Does the particular area have a long history of producing wine in that particular region?’" is another important question for me. And "is that wine classic to the region and/or transcending what everyone in that region is doing? Are they someone that their contemporaries look up to for inspiration and for guidance?" and then I'll ask, "who was their mentor? Who are they mentoring?" That's incredibly important as well as identifying great producers, and what makes them great is the fact that they've learned so much from others before them, but also are committed to refining and training that next generation.
Favorite wine-related film, book, magazine, etc?
I’m a big Noble Rot fan, and I know that's probably a cliche. What Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew are doing is incredible. What they've done to make wine approachable in a way that makes you grin and laugh and enjoy it, rather than making you feel small about it.
I'm going to be in London in a few weeks, and that's the first reservation that we have booked. Jet lag is terrible, but the excitement that brims from that reservation carries you through because you're always so eager to see what they're doing. They embody exactly what it is that I'd like to try to do with our program – make it fun, make it accessible, show the guests something new, and make all of that relevant to their experience while enhancing it at the same time.
What's the biggest misconception about being a sommelier, or wine in general, that you'd like to dispel?
That it's all glitz and glamour. I think the conception from the guest point of view is that we're just showing up to work with a wine glass in hand, tasting the wine, and working on the side. But the reality is, there's so much that goes into it. The amount of preparation that goes into making sure your lists are accurate, your mise-en-place is set.
It is our responsibility do our diligence, do our research, have conversations with collectors and producers that made the wines. It's a great amount of work that goes into developing an understanding of the flavor profile of some of these wines, the story behind them, how that's relevant to the guests, and why they should care. It's not easy to craft the descriptors of the wine, because what we try to avoid is just tasting notes because putting things like wine in a vacuum, it kind of makes it monotonous. The biggest misconception is that that's all it is, and the reality is it's our job to flesh that out into a narrative that makes it relevant to the guest experience, and that requires a great amount of work.
How has your taste in wine changed over time?
When you get into wine, it's sort of trying to build these schemas and framework for what each style represents. I would seek out wines that were considered benchmarks, or of each of the particular regions. And I liked wines with a little bit more of a robust and powerful flavor; there was intensity there that was easy to understand.
Over time, that evolved into wines that presented a little bit more savory character, that presented a little bit more subtlety, a little challenging to understand at first, that needed some time to contemplate. So, I started diving into wines that were a little bit more complex, and I think once I got into things like champagne, I was interested more in perpetual cuvées and soleras and that notion of creating something beautiful out of multiple vintages, rather than one, and looking for things that are forgotten treasures.
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