Making Wine Without Hidden Ingredients Visiting Ben Justman of Peony Lane Wine
A Colorado winemaker proves honesty, land, and lineage still matter more than additives and industry trends.
Rebels,
I drove into the mountains of Colorado to meet a winemaker doing something the industrial wine world has spent decades trying to avoid: telling the truth.
What we found on Ben Justman’s 25-acre family farm wasn’t just a story about clean wine. It was a story about land, fathers and sons, generational stewardship, and why the best products in America still come from people — not corporations.
The Farm That Raised Him — And the One He Came Back To
Ben grew up here. Not metaphorically, literally in these orchards, gardens, greenhouses, and sheep pastures. His father moved the family to this land when Ben was eight and built a self-sustaining micro-ecosystem: apples, pears, cherries, peaches, plums, deer meat, sheep, root cellars, cold storage, and a greenhouse so efficient it heats the house.
Ben hated it.
Farm labor. No freedom. Dad barking orders. No thanks.
So he left and travelled to Vietnam, Denver, anywhere but Colorado farm country. But after ten years away, an exhausted version of himself realized something:
He wanted to build something real. Something he could own.
His dad made a suggestion that changed everything:
“Why don’t you make wine?”
And that was it.
Why His Wine Doesn’t Make You Feel Like Garbage
Most people don’t realize this:
You can legally add up to 75 ingredients to a bottle of wine without telling anyone. To name a few…
Flavor extracts
Tannin powder
Mega Purple dye
Acid regulators
Stabilizers
Artificial oak flavor
Fining agents
Lab-made “aroma corrections”
If wine were required to list its ingredients, the entire industry would collapse in 24 hours.
Ben does the opposite.
His process:
harvest → ferment → age for 12–24 months → minimal oak + zero chemical manipulation → bottle → done.
The philosophy is simple:
If the grapes are good, don’t screw them up.
His grapes grow at one of the highest elevation wine regions in North America. Pinot Noir barely survives up here — which is exactly why it tastes the way it does. Delicate. Light. Structured. Expressive. No additives needed.
When you drink Ben’s wine, you’re not drinking “wine flavor.”
You’re drinking the essence of the environment, bottled.
The House Built by a Father and Son
The most surprising part of the tour wasn’t the wine.
It was the house.
Ben and his 75-year-old dad built the entire thing by hand. Just the two of them and one friend. Board by board. Beam by beam. An entire year of conflict, respect, frustration, and bonding poured into the walls.
Ben told us something that stuck:
“Everything I’ve built is on the shoulders of my father. And my kids will build on mine.”
That’s regeneration.
Not just soil, but lineage.
He didn’t want to be a farmer growing up. Now he’s becoming the kind of father he wished he had, on the land that raised him, building something his future kids will inherit.
The Direct-to-Consumer Lesson Every Farmer Needs to Hear
Ben didn’t scale his winery through tasting rooms or distributors.
He started at farmers markets.
Aspen. Basalt. Telluride. Glenwood Springs. Five markets a week. Loading cases into a truck. Shaking hands. Telling stories. Looking customers in the eyes.
That’s where he learned the most important lesson:
“People don’t just buy wine. They buy the person making it.”
And eventually, it clicked.
He leaned into the values he actually cared about:
family
land
purity
craftsmanship
responsibility
Bitcoin
honesty in agriculture
And suddenly his online sales exploded.
Especially on X.
Why?
Because people want to support makers who stand for something real.
If all you say is “our beef is high quality” or “we sell great vegetables,” you’re competing with everyone. When you show your values, your voice, your world… you stand alone.
The Bitcoin Piece: Why His Customers Are Different
Nearly 50% of Ben’s sales are now in Bitcoin.
Not crypto.
Not tokens.
Bitcoin — hard money with final settlement, no middlemen, and no seasonal charity from the Federal Reserve.
Bitcoiners have three traits that are priceless for small farmers and artisans:
They care deeply about purity (in money, in food, in ingredients).
They spend based on values, not convenience.
They become fiercely loyal customers when they find someone aligned with them.
Farmers searching for “the right customers” overlook them entirely.
Ben didn’t.
And his DTC business is now one of the best examples of value-based customer building in the entire agriculture world.
The Bigger Picture: This Is Regeneration
Regeneration isn’t just about soil or food.
It’s about:
stewarding land
repairing family relationships
creating honest products
opting out of corrupted systems
standing for something real
building generational durability
Peony Lane Wine isn’t just a bottle of aged grapes. It’s what happens when a kid who hated farm chores returns home as a man ready to build a legacy.
These are the stories industrial agriculture will never tell you. But they’re the stories that matter most.
Thank you for reading, Viva La Regenaissance!
-Ryan Griggs
If this story resonates, you’ll want to hear it directly from Ben. The full interview goes deeper into the family history, the philosophy behind clean wine, and why he believes small producers are the backbone of America’s food future.