"It don't come easy," Ringo Starr sang, and though he was not talking about the retail wine business, he could have been.

It has been a tough year for wine merchants. As wine consumption across the board is decreasing, the impact of changes in Colorado laws allowing supermarkets to sell wines in their stores has increased competition. And, as one part of the market turns toward low or no alcohol offerings, another is moving toward the new spirits that have flooded the marketplace in recent years. All of that is suitable fodder for a future column or columns.

Ah, but as this is the holiday season, we come not to bury one local wine and liquor purveyor but to praise him.

Gonzo Mirich, the owner of Jimbo's Fine Wines & Liquors, is in the midst of a move that will change his business and the experience of buying beer, liquor, and wine for his Basalt regulars.

"We have moved into a new space just across the parking lot from Jimbo's that we are calling Jimbo's Express, and we can't wait for our friends and new residents of Basalt and the Valley to come in and see us," Gonzo said with enthusiasm on a recent afternoon in the new digs.

And the new digs are something completely different. On the day before Thanksgiving, Jimbo's Express opened in a double-wide trailer featuring a highly-curated selection of the coldest beer, top shelf spirits, and hand-picked fine wines.

"Though we are a little smaller, we still offer our customers the same selection of great products that we always have," he says. And a look around the store proves just that.

Like much of the downtown area, the Basalt Town Circle complex, once the site of a Clark's Market, is going through growing pains. Tim Belinski and Andrew Light are the developers of a new complex, 140 Basalt Circle Court, that will include both residential and retail space when completed.

"We learned two years ago that the building was going to be torn down and replaced, and we had to come up with a plan to survive," Gonzo explained. "Liquor laws would not allow us to move out of the area and keep our license. We needed to maintain the same address, so I started thinking about restaurants that open patios in the summer. I thought maybe we could get a trailer and do something similar to keep the same address."

While the plan sounded audacious, he was able to work with the developers, the community, and the state to make it happen.

"We work very creatively at Jimbo's," he said in an understatement.

Gonzo, who hails from Argentina, came to Aspen to work as a ski instructor in the early 2000s. He purchased the shop after he had called on it as a wine and liquor representative for Breakthru Beverage Group. Jimbo's has been in business for 53 years since it opened in 1972, and make no mistake, this is not the first challenge that the store has faced over the years since Gonzo took over in March of 2016.

From fires to pandemics, Jimbo's has persevered to, not just survive, but to thrive as an integral part of Basalt and the midvalley.

"I remember when the hills above Basalt were burning in July of 2018, and we didn't know what was going to happen. Locals came by in their pick-up trucks and helped us empty the store in case the fire came."

Then in 2020 when the pandemic occurred, the shop pivoted to take-out, as orders were delivered to masked customers who parked in front of the store -- all the while, the goal was to keep locals in fine wines and spirits.

"The previous owner (Steve Broitzman) told me, "Take care of the people of Basalt, they will always take care of Jimbo's.' And he was right, both during the fire and the pandemic and now," he said.

Much of Jimbo's success has come down to simply supplying customers, both old and new, with great products and good value. The Basalt wine and spirits market is varied with a cadre of connoisseurs who rely on Jimbo's to provide a global collection of premium wines as well as working men and women who come in for great products at proper prices. None of that has changed in the new digs.

"We know our customers," Gonzo says, "and we focus on getting interesting wines and beers and spirits that they don't have at the big box brands.

So far things at Jimbo's Express have gone well.

"The process has been amazing, and the interior of the store is working great," Gonzo said. "The future looks very promising, but we need to survive the two plus years in a trailer. We are ready for our loyal customers to come back and see us."