Estes Park’s Snowy Peaks Winery sold

ESTES PARK — After two decades of crafting award-winning wines and welcoming visitors with music and a gift shop, Erik and Candice Mohr have officially sold Snowy Peaks Winery and the real estate associated with the business at 292-294 Moraine Ave. in Estes Park.

Rockscar Hospitality LLC, led by Albert Schmurr, purchased the winery for $1.7 million.

“We’ve worked hard for 20 years to build something special, and it’s time for us to retire,” Candice Mohr said in a prepared statement. “It’s bittersweet, but we’re excited to pass the torch to Albert, knowing that Snowy Peaks is in great hands. We are so grateful to the Estes Park community and all of our loyal customers for their support over the years.”

Wines sourced from top vineyards in the Grand Valley near Palisade on Colorado’s Western Slope earned Snowy Peaks a Business of the Year award from the Estes Chamber of Commerce in 2023.

The property has a 2,406-square-foot tasting room, 2,708-square-foot production area and two outdoor seating spaces, one surrounding the winery’s front door and the other on a lower level on the east side of the building where live music is performed in summer months. The upper level faces Moraine Avenue, which has become westbound U.S. Highway 36 as part of the Downtown Estes Loop project, and the lower level can be accessed from West Riverside Drive, now eastbound U.S. 36.

Schmurr, an industry veteran, brings extensive hospitality experience to Snowy Peaks Winery. He and his wife, Lindsay, for 13 years managed resorts within three state parks in the Missouri Ozarks, and in 2022 bought the 18th-century Pilgrim’s Inn in Deer Isle, Maine. The Schmurrs sold the inn late last year.

“Snowy Peaks Winery looks forward to continuing the long tradition of excellent wines our guests have come accustomed to while bringing innovative food and non-alcoholic cocktails to the mix,” Schmurr said in a prepared statement. “I look forward to meeting our customers, new and old.”

The transition is expected to be seamless, with Rockscar Hospitality committed to preserving the winery’s character while enhancing the guest experience.

The sale was brokered by Jamie Globelnik of Realtec Commercial Real Estate Services

of Loveland representing the seller and Christian Collinet of First Colorado Realty of

Estes Park representing the buyer.

The sale includes Snowy Peaks’ current stock of wine, plus furniture, fixtures and equipment including all the wine-production infrastructure.

The Mohrs opened Snowy Peaks Winery in 2005. Erik Mohr had owned an ecology consulting firm in Arizona, where he met Candice, and the couple decided to move to Colorado, where she grew up. Erik’s business partner started a winery, and when the Mohrs visited him there in 2003, they got the idea to start one of their own.

Erik asked Candice to give him a winemaking kit for Christmas, and the next year the couple brought 30 gallons of grape juice home from the Western Slope in their Subaru. Erik made his first batch of wine, “and that turned out pretty good,” Candice said. After some seminars and support from groups such as the Colorado Association of Viticulturists and Enologists, or CAVE, the couple in November 2004 began looking for a place to open their winery. They found it in Estes Park, and opened their business the next year, largely financed with credit cards.

The business boomed with tourists and locals alike who reveled in the award-winning vintages Erik handcrafted from Colorado grapes. Visitors often paired the wines with brie, Haystack Mountain goat cheese, crackers, jams and jellies from the shop in front for picnics in nearby Rocky Mountain National Park or to savor while enjoying live music on Friday afternoons. Various acoustic performers played just off the main room in colder months, or on that lower-level outdoor patio in summer.

Meanwhile, their children could play in the building’s designated “No Wine-ing Zone.”

The Mohrs aged their wines carefully and didn’t sell them before their time. But eventually. Last summer, it came time to sell. Candice Mohr said the couple timed it along with Erik’s planned departure from his other job, as an ecologist working with the Cedar Creek Associates consulting firm in Fort Collins.

“He had made a plan with that company to retire,” she said, “and we wanted to sell the winery at the same time.”

And then?

“We’re just going to take some time off and get our heads screwed on,” Candice Mohr said last August. “Erik’s job is super intense, and he traveled a lot. We just need to be calm for a little while.”

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