by Ruth Tobias
Last fall, for the first time ever, the Michelin Guide came to Colorado, where it bestowed one star upon just five restaurants across the state. It came as no surprise to Denverites that Beckon was among them. Flanked by a 14-seat covered patio, the 18-seat chef’s counter set in a tiny old bungalow in the RiNo neighborhood has been racking up the accolades ever since its opening in 2018 under the auspices of executive chef Duncan Holmes and director of experience Allison Anderson, whose guiding principles are intricacy and intimacy: highly sophisticated, microseasonal tasting menus on the one hand, extraordinarily warm and conscientious service on the other.
On a snowy night last December, a companion and I joined them for a special fifth-anniversary Winter Feast. Amid the expected luxuries—caviar and truffles, vintage Champagne and white Burgundy—lurked a number of totally charming surprises: clam risotto made with sushi rice and saké lees and accompanied by Wakatake Onikoroshi Junmai Ginjo, for instance, and a dessert of honey meringue with milk ice cream and sesame alongside Hatzidakis Vinsanto. The latter, I would come to learn, reflected a specific passion of wine director Justin Mueller. “I’m particularly proud of our dessert wine program. . . . It’s a category that people are scared of, [but only] because they don’t know it,” he told me during a recent phone interview. “[They’re like, ‘Oh, it’s . . . some lusciously honeyed, viscous liquid,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, no, it doesn’t have to be.’ It [can be] really high-acid and complex and multifaceted, and I think that’s what [ultimately] turns people on. So having two pages of dessert wine that we pour by the glass”—including a full page of Madeiras dating back to 1860—“is really fun and I think elucidative too for guests.”
Serving up stellar wines with a side of education comes only naturally to the Philadelphia-born Mueller, a onetime high-school teacher who has learned a great deal about hospitality in turn by working everywhere from The Olive Garden (“which I think is hilarious at this stage in my career,” he admitted) to San Francisco’s three-Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn. Such breadth of experience ensures that he’s comfortable in the role of putting others equally at ease, whether he’s pouring them a Grand Cru Riesling to complement a dish of squab, Mokum carrot, sunchoke, winter citrus, and Marcona almond or introducing them to the concept of ageability through a selection of back vintages: “To be able to showcase 1980s and 1990s Napa and Sonoma wines that are tremendously made and not outlandishly expensive I think [is] cool because a lot of folks are like, ‘I have a ten-year-old bottle—that’s probably too old, right?’ ‘Not necessarily,’ I tell them . . . and they’re kind of dumbfounded at that,” he said. “So to give people access to these things [and] build up [their] knowledge about wine is really a core tenet of mine.”
As of January 2023, Mueller has been putting it into practice not only at Beckon but also at its more casual adjacent sibling, Major Tom. “The idea from the inception was to have a killer Champagne list that was drastically undermarked for the space that we occupy . . . really as a way to get people drinking awesome Champagne at reasonable prices,” he explained, citing a bottling of Bérêche & Fils he put on the list for $94: “You can’t find it at that price in a restaurant outside of France.” The bubbles are supplemented by a still-wine list that “definitely has some classics like Oregon Pinot Noir but also some funky, oddball stuff that . . . doesn’t have as much of a place on the Beckon wine list [but] that the service staff has really gotten behind,” be it single-vineyard Counoise from California’s Dunnigan Hills AVA or To Kokkinaki, a Greek red blend “from this tiny island called Tinos, where this guy and his son have literally 2 acres of vines and that’s it.” It may be “the yin to the yang of Beckon,” in Mueller’s words—but Major Tom is beckoning Denver’s wine drinkers just the same.