MontaVino Winery [August 2021]

As I mentioned last week, we are still in Kalispell, Montana where my friend Deb, and I have found another winery to visit!! I don’t have to tell you since you can see if from the photo below, but we are big wine fans… hahaha!! Aren’t these just the cutest? I mean for those of you who even remember what a paper “fan” like this is actually looks like and is used for. I am pretty sure this is a quick stop; it is either in between am and pm hot air balloon flights or maybe it is right before we were supposed to have dinner.

I say this because you can see from the second photo that we only ordered a few little snacks to go with our tasting. I think it was because we were either pressed for time, or we didn’t want to ruin our appetites for something we were doing later. Regardless, here we are sitting, drinking wine with our fans!! LOL!! So, if you breakdown MontaVino you can easily see where the name comes from. "Monta" is the first part of Montana the winery location, and "Vino" means wine, the product they are offering to the public.

Even though Montana is not known for its viticulture [cultivation of grapes] Julie Davison [originally from Missoula, Montana] had a dream to expand Kalispell’s wine scene. She moved to Kalispell 14 years earlier and wanted to include this beautiful little downtown along with its community into her wine movement. Julie wasn’t exactly sure where to start, so why not try to meet a few winemakers from different regions to gain knowledge that could help her meet her goals. She went from the Columbia Valley in Washington, all the way to the shores of San Francisco!!

Then with the help her boyfriend, Rob Coladonato and a few other friends, MontaVino came to life and opened its doors in July of 2019. I find her story to be quite interesting… first of all, she rode around town on her bicycle for several months looking at available locations for the perfect spot to open MontaVino. Well, she found it on First Avenue East and proceeded to renovate the space into the comfortable tasting room that it is today. She is proud to say that every single person who helped with this renovation project was someone she knew personally.

You see, Julie had been a medical coder at the Kalispell Regional Medical Center for 25 years and she had met a lot of people over the years. This included the 28 or so women whom she supervised. When it was time to make a career change, it only made sense to explore the world of wine that she loved so much. She states that MontaVino is made up of a group of wine lovers, not sommeliers. [wine experts] The staff includes personal friends of hers and local teachers on summer break, all of whom really have no wine or business experience. “We’ll learn this together” Julie says.

In fact, “togetherness” has always been one of Julies top priorities You can tell by the way she involved the community to help create specialty drinks to be added to the drink menu; offering activities such as paint and wine and live music; partnering with a neighboring bistro to serve their food at her tasting room. You can see from the photo below that it drew me back as a repeat customer, and this in turn created another "Big

Wine Fan” [Hahaha!!] when my good friend Katie Gordy came to visit!! [pictured below]

As always, I am sorry to report how sad it made me to find out that after 5 plus years of business MontaVino closed its doors March of 2025. They did have one last hurrah… an everything must go sale. Per social media news, the lack of time and resources was cited as the main reason for the closure.  

On a brighter note, next week Wine with Wixy will be back to work and back in Spokane, Washington. You won't want to miss the introduction of returning but still new co-worker who has also turned out to be new wine friend!!

Cheers to you my wine loving friends, and TTFN!!