“Come on, drink up, Lewis. We have thinking to do.” —Chief Inspector Morse, Cambridge, UK





Good Wine and a Good Soak. On a recent business trip through southwest Montana, I had my evenings free. That allowed me to make the 30-mile trip from Bozeman to Norris Hot Springs. [read more in the Missoula Independent]

First Class. Who would have thought that wine grapes would grow at 3,450 feet just two degrees south of the Canadian border? Andy Sponseller and Connie Poten planted their first grapes in the Rattlesnake Valley near Missoula, Montana in 1997 and they have been producing first-class organically grown and produced wines since 2003. [read more in Zone 4 Magazine]

Ten Spoon adds more accolades to its growing list of awards, capturing a gold medal, a Best of Region award, a silver medal and three bronze medals for five of its wines from the 2009 Northwest Wine Summit Competition, the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition in New York and the National Women's Wine Competition. [Read more]

Wine writer lists Silver Spoon Reserve Pinot Noir as one of her faves. This wine is clean, pure in style and screams, “Drink me!” [Read more from the Missoulian]

Ten Spoon joins Vital Ground to protect habitat and preserve open space. Ten Spoon will donate one dollar to the Missoula-based land trust for every bottle of its Prairie Thunder organic red wine sold. [Read more]

Wine of the Week. We all know that drinking red wine is enjoyable, that it can enhance a meal, and that it protects against heart disease. But did you know that drinking wine can now benefit the protection and restoration of North America’s grizzly bear populations? [Read more from the Missoulian]

Sustainable. Andy Sponseller is tired of hearing people talk about sustainability and green living without doing much about either. Especially given that he and Connie Poten, the organic vineyard’s other owner, will be in debt for the next 10 years for the sake of the green cause. [Read more from the Missoula Independent]

The Danish Connection. Friends of Ten Spoon Vineyard and Winery met at the Copenhagen airport with Frederik Kreutzer, the winner of the Name-That-Winery Contest in 2006, and presented him with two cases of Ten Spoon wines. [Read more]

Corking the Competition.Casey Lewis poured himself a pitifully small glass of Prairie Thunder, the Petite Sirah he helps make as an assistant winemaker at Missoula's Ten Spoon Winery. [Read more from the Missoulian]

Global warming may actually help Connie Poten’s business. Without fail a freeze would consistently come on Memorial Day and Labor Day, making even the most resistant of grapes all but impossible to grow.  [Read more from New West]

Ten Spoon Vineyard and Winery. Andy Sponseller and Connie Poten sit at their kitchen table facing a living room stacked from cement floor to elevated ceiling with cases of wine. [Read more from Big Sky Airlines magazine Latitude]

Harvesting Dreams: The crush is on. Dreams ferment. They reside in the subconscious, torpid, like the winter sleep of fishes. From time to time, sometimes with years, sometimes with decades as intervals, they bubble back up to the surface. [Read more from the Big Sky Journal]

Trademark complaint forces Missoula winery to find another name. A West Coast winery has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Rattlesnake Creek Vineyard owners Andy Sponseller and Connie Poten that tells them to find another name. [Read more in the Missoulian]

Rattlesnake vineyard selects new name: Ten Spoons. Ten Spoons. It's the new name from the vintners formerly known as Rattlesnake Creek. [Read more from The Missoulian]

Volunteers, students harvest grapes at Rattlesnake Creek Vineyard.
It's harvest time at the Rattlesnake Creek Vineyard, and everyone who has come to pick the bounty is smiling. [Read more from the Missoulian]

Extreme winemaking. “Look at that color!” exclaimed Sponz, holding the glass of ruby red wine up to the light. It’s the smoothest shade of red you can imagine, with a faint ring of honey amber around the edge. [Read more in the Missoula Independent]

Dinner Provençal at the Rattlesnake Winery. We brought in the 2005 Montana Chef of the Year, Chef Jim Gray, to create a four course menu cooked in the style of Provence, using Missoula's own bounty and then paired it with wines produced locally by the Rattlesnake Winery. [Read more in Three Rivers Lifestyle]

Couple's dream reaches fruition with grape harvest. The grapes, a hardy variety called Marechal Foch, are a muted purple thick with juice and ready for picking. Up and down the rows, men and women—some students, some neighbors—are working the vines, clipping the ripe clusters and dropping then into yellow trays. [Read more in the Missoulian]

A grapevine runs through it. Montana might often seem short on luxury, but part of the greatness of the place is that it never lacks dreamers. Andy Sponseller and Connie Poten are two of them, and after five years of dreaming, scheming, and just plain sweating, the pair's far-sighted vision has ripened to fruition. [Read more in Montana Living]