We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Keenan High. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Keenan below.
Hi Keenan, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
I got my work ethic from my parents but in a more unique way than most. When I was 2 years old my parents purchased a peach orchard in Palisade, Colorado with hopes of turning it into a vineyard. The peaches were just too good to take out so they slowly acquired more land with more peaches and by the time I was 7 we had over 50 acres of peaches. My parents realized that this was enough peaches to start supplying local grocery stores and built a peach packaging line and began packing peaches. I started working on this packing line at 8 years old and started managing the line and the 20 people needed to operate it at 14 years old and have been doing it since then. This taught me work ethic as being a farmer means you’re on Mother Nature’s time table and need to get things done while you can. There is no pausing or breaks during harvest season and that is the beauty of being a farmer. That is what I attribute my work ethic to.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I oversee the operations of Colterris Winery and High Country Orchards here in Palisade, Colorado. We are Colorado’s largest Estate Grown, Bottled, and Produced winery, which means we do everything from the ground up in the wine making process. We grow all the grapes, produce and bottle all of the wine on site here. For HCO, we supply peaches to Kroger and Whole Foods all over Colorado and have been for 20 years. My passion is what I do as there is no better feeling than seeing another person enjoy the “fruits” of your labor. Whether it be the complexities of our award winning wines, or the dripping sweetness of our tree ripened peaches, that is where my passion lies. We are currently in process of expanding Colterris by adding a wine artifact museum in downtown Palisade that will house 16,000+ pieces of wine memorabilia. This large addition has added a 3rd tasting room, banquet room with kitchen, and inside museum space that gives us a whole new avenue for entertainment in wine country.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I would say work ethic, problem solving, and critical thinking are the 3 skills that were and still are the most impactful in my life and career. All of these will apply in any industry you choose. You need to be able to identify issues, solve the problems in creative ways, and apply the solution correctly through the work ethic you have. You can know the solution to all the worlds problems but if you do not enact the solution, then there is no purpose for it.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
We are facing an interesting challenge in marketing, which might not be so obvious on the surface. Wine crosses over multiple generations with each one wanting more varying experiences than most products. Older individuals enjoy the education of how the wine was made and where it came from while younger groups want a more entertaining experience. Finding the balance between the two is giving us room for innovation like never before.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.colterris.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/colterriswines/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ColterrisWines/
