Dave Engen's Wining Ways
Photography: Thimothy Thimmes
Dave Engen has an ageless, almost adolescent appearance. Maybe it’s his California surfer roots. Or maybe it’s the wine that keeps him so youthful.
It’s no surprise that Engen wound up in the wine business. It was all but inevitable. “I was born in 1961,” he says enthusiastically. “That was the best Bordeaux year EVER!” And anyone who knows Dave Engen knows that he is nothing if not enthusiastic. An innocent phone call simply to check in with Engen can ultimately lead to a 30-mile mountain bike ride, a half-day hike, a concert at The Canyons or Deer Valley, a day of serious skiing, or all of the above. Thankfully, an active day with Dave always ends with a bottle or two of wine.
A longtime Park City resident, Engen is president of the Mountain States Wine Division for Young’s Market Company, the largest distributor and broker of fine wine and spirits in the western U.S. As such, Dave does everything from assisting restaurateurs in building their wine programs and monitoring product inventory and availability for his clients, to providing onsite wait staff training and arranging tours and visits with wineries and distilleries. More often than not, Engen is reachable via his Blackberry, as he conducts business in the near and far corners of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Montana, and elsewhere. Park City, however, is his true love.
A Sun Peak resident, Engen hails originally from Laguna Beach, California. He still trades his skis for a surfboard when he visits family there. As a high school senior, Engen says, “I pimped my parents into letting me attend school in Park City, where they owned a condo. I asked them if I could live alone here while I attended winter session at Park City High School and they agreed, with the stipulation that I return to Laguna Beach to graduate there.”
During and after stints at San Diego State University and the University of Utah, Engen assisted his brother in producing and distributing a wine-dispensing system, met his future wife Shauna, and worked in a German winery for a year. At the prestigious Langwerth von Simmem Winery in the Rheingau, Engen did everything from sweep the courtyard and filter wine to harvest grapes and conduct winery tastings and tours for U.S. soldiers, a job he’d eventually find himself doing back in California at the Beringer Vineyard. “The place was so popular. They had even more visitors than Mondavi,” says Engen. “I was really just a tour guide, but I was treated like a rock star!”
During his year-long spell at Beringer, circa 1986, Engen used his two days off per week to explore California’s wine country: Napa, Sonoma, Amador, Mendocino, Santa Barbara and beyond. With a tinge of nostalgia, Engen recounts, “I’d hit the wineries and learn as much as I could and then crash in the back of my van.”
But Engen found himself being drawn back to Park City. “Napa was starting to feel a little like Disneyland,” he admits. He then worked for seven years as a wine representative for a fine wine distributor in Southern California. The wine industry connections he made in California would serve him well here in Utah when he moved back to Park City in 1993 and teamed up with fellow Californian Phil Giordano to create Western Edge, Park City-based brokers of wine and spirits. In 2004, Western Edge was purchased by Young’s Market.
When asked if he still gets excited about wine after so many years in the business, Engen replies, “Wine is a big part of my life. I make a point to partake of it every day, even if I have the flu. People think that the wine business is more romantic than it really is, so at the end of a hard day of work I sit down and enjoy something from my cellar.”
What’s his favorite wine? “Since [the film] Sideways, there’s been a Pinot Noir craze. But it’s been my craze since I was a kid,” says Engen. He likes the versatility and finesse of Pinot Noir saying, “Pinot Noir grapes are thin skinned, so you don’t get too much pigment and tannins as with many red wines.” For long-term keeping, however, Engen prefers to cellar Cabernet-based wines. What single wine would he want to accompany him on a deserted island? “German Riesling, if I’m in a warm climate,” he says. “But if I’m in a place where you have to use animal skins to keep warm, then Bordeaux.”
When pressed to pick a single favorite bottle of wine he’d like to open, Engen speaks fondly of 1929 and 1961 Chateau Pichon Lalande vintages, the respective birth years of his father and himself. “Or maybe Thomas Jefferson’s 1787 Chateau Lafite,” he says with a smile. “Even if it’s gritty and over the hill, I’d still find a way to suck it down!”
Ted Scheffler is the food and wine columnist for the Salt Lake City Weekly and keeper of a rapidly shrinking wine cellar.
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