Bugling Elk Vineyards & Winery

The tasting room at Bugling Elk Vineyards & Winery stands on Apple Lane in Penrose, in the Arkansas River Valley east of the Royal Gorge. The regional visitor guide describes an open room with a comfortable atmosphere and notes the charcuterie. The wines run, in the winery’s own phrase, “from a lovely white to a very dry red.” Shawn Kauffman owns and operates the place with his wife, Alexis. He is a retired Green Beret who served 26 years in the U.S. Army, most of them with the 10th Special Forces Group. The winery says the name honors Colorado’s wildlife.

The list on Apple Lane

The winery’s posted list gives four whites: Gewurztraminer, Riesling, Cabernet Doré, and Golden Meadows, which is sold only at the winery. When the list was posted, every white went for $5 a glass and $17 a bottle. The reds are Ruttin Red, a blend of 65 percent Merlot and 35 percent Pinot Noir; Merlot from the 2020, 2021, and 2022 vintages; a Crimson Cabernet; and Marquette, which at $8 a glass is the dearest pour on the page.

The bottles have taken medals at the Colorado Governor’s Cup. At the 2025 competition the 2023 High Mountain Stream Traminette won silver. Bronze went to the 2024 Royal Red Marquette, the 2024 Velvet Red Blend, and the 2024 Snow Melt Riesling.

Behind the tasting room is a separate event room. The winery rents it for private parties, and the visitor guide also offers it for office retreats and professional development. Parties held there have ranged from birthdays to anniversaries. The winery runs a wine club and a calendar of wine-and-food evenings, among them a Steak & Wine night on Valentine’s Day.

Stomping grapes in late September

The largest gathering of the year is the Grape Stomp. The fourth annual stomp ran Sept. 26 and 27, 2026, from noon to 5 p.m. each day, the first time it filled two days. Kauffman told Krista Witiak of KXRM’s Loving Living Local that strong attendance in earlier years prompted the change. The winery’s announcement put it this way: “By adding an extra day, we’re creating more room for everyone to relax, enjoy the great wines and experience the festivities without the large crowds.”

The 2026 program listed live music all weekend from four bands, four food vendors, eight spaces for local artisans, and traditional grape stomping with the vineyard in view. Adults paid $20, which covered a souvenir glass, one glass of wine, and a turn in the stomp. Guests under 21 paid $5. The winery promised “an abundant amount of seating” and said visitors could bring their own lawn chairs.

A Green Beret and a malbec

Accounts differ on when the vineyard began. The winery’s website and a 2026 KXRM report give 2017. The Colorado Sun in 2023 and the Vino & Notes festival’s winery listing give 2018. Vino & Notes says the Kauffmans planted more than 1,400 Malbec vines in spring 2018, hoping for a high-altitude grape to rival Argentina’s.

The idea came from Europe. The winery’s site says the couple came to love grape and wine culture while stationed in Germany and hope to build more of it in Fremont County. The county once had plenty. In 1910 it reportedly counted 133,000 vines producing more than 300,000 pounds of grapes, many of them planted by Italian immigrants who came to work in the mines. The numbers shrank during Prohibition.

In January 2020, with Kauffman still in the Army, the Colorado Sun listed Bugling Elk among the Penrose wineries “in the works” and expected it to open on Apple Lane within a couple of years. He and Alexis had been planting and experimenting for two years by then. Fellow growers had warned him that malbec was hard to grow there, but he wanted to try anyway, and he had also planted riesling and cabernet franc. He told the paper that a wine culture would help make Fremont County known for something other than the home of state and federal prisons. “The key for everyone right now is don’t over invest,” he said. “We’re trying to do something that will not break the bank.”

The county had cleared the way a few months earlier. In October 2019 Fremont County changed its zoning so that small farms in residential agricultural areas could open a limited winery or cidery without going through a costly special review. Justin Jenkins, a Penrose native and apple grower, led the push. The county’s planning director said the rule allowed up to 100,000 gallons a year and capped retail and tasting room space at 1,500 square feet.

Marquette in a greenhouse

By 2023 the malbec had failed. “I have lost over 3,000 vines in the last five years,” Kauffman told the Colorado Sun. “I wanted malbec, but I’m done with malbec. Live and learn. I’ve learned more by the losses than the successes.” That summer Penrose took heavy rain and hail, extreme heat, and the ever-present wind.

In early July 2023 the Kauffmans opened the tasting room, the newest in Penrose, with nearly a dozen wines. Among them were his new favorites, marquette and cabernet doré, and each won silver at the Governor’s Cup that August at Metropolitan State University. Marquette was developed in Minnesota. Colorado State University viticulture specialist Charlotte Oliver says it survives temperatures down to 35 below zero.

Kauffman, newly retired, spoke of grapes growing throughout the county and of establishing an American Viticultural Area in Penrose, which the Sun judged unlikely any time soon. In the meantime he joined Jenkins in starting marquette vines in a greenhouse on the Jenkins farm. Jenkins had built the greenhouse during the pandemic for vegetables that never sold. He had also closed his own small tasting room, because he did not enjoy the retail side of a winery, which the Sun wrote that Kauffman relishes. In the summer of 2023, despite a grasshopper invasion, the vines in the greenhouse looked lush. The ones outside were mostly dried up.