Creekside Cellars

The first thing a visitor meets at Creekside Cellars is the bread. Focaccia and ciabatta are baked in the café, and the smell reaches the door. Some customers, the winery has said, come “just for the smell of it.” The building stands at 28036 Highway 74 in downtown Evergreen, on the Bear Creek side of the road. It is eight miles south of I-70 by the Evergreen Parkway and about a half hour west of Denver. Out back an open deck hangs over the creek, whose waters Westword called “snow-fed” in 2018.

The deck over Bear Creek

Guests sit either in the main dining room or on the deck. In Caren Austin’s account for Mountain Town Magazine, the meal and the wine come “with the sound of Bear Creek right beside you.” The patio fills quickly, and the house asks diners to book ahead. In 2018 Westword’s Krista Kafer found live music and local art in the winery, which she placed on what she called Evergreen’s “rustic main street.” The shops along the highway sit close together. Evergreen Crafters is 79 feet away, the Owl Cat Shoppe 87, and the Muddy Buck Cafe and the Wildflower Cafe a little over a hundred.

The day runs in stages. Lunch is served from 11 to 3. Wine and small bites follow until 4, with a weekday happy hour from 3 to 4:30. Dinner goes on until 7:45 Monday through Thursday and 8:45 Friday through Sunday. The evening service is a later addition: in 2018 the doors closed at 5, and an antipasto list carried the last hour.

Focaccia, the Guido, and the platter

The bread turns up in nearly everything. Large grilled panini come on focaccia with pasta salad or olive oil kettle chips. Several are filled from the local “River Bear”: peachwood-smoked turkey with roasted red peppers and pesto, ham with melted brie and sliced apple, and top round roast beef with Gruyère and a side of au jus. The Guido stacks sopressata, Genoa, capicola, and pepperoni under provolone, with oil and vinegar. “I’m from New York,” Austin wrote of it, “and this sandwich is a letter from home.”

The antipasto platter holds imported cheeses, olives, meats, grilled and marinated seasonal vegetables, and assorted tapas and spreads, with focaccia or ciabatta. Austin wrote that it comes in two sizes, “looks like a colorful painting and can easily feed four.” Smaller plates include warm brie with berry and pepper preserves and an olive boat of imported olives from Italy, Spain, and France. Salads come with wedges of focaccia, and a Bambino menu serves children twelve and under.

The dinner menu is divided into Antipasti, Le Specialità, and Insalata e Pasta. It offers a New York strip au poivre with a peppercorn red wine reduction, salmon cooked in herb butter, shrimp scampi on linguine, and a lamb Bolognese of braised lamb, Kalamata olives, and feta over bucatini. In 2018 Kafer ate a bison brisket stew and a chocolate pâté.

Grapes from Palisade, wine from Evergreen

The wines are made on the premises in Evergreen from Colorado-grown fruit. Much of it comes from The Vinelands, the winery’s ten-acre vineyard in Palisade. In 2018 Westword reported that Creekside also bought grapes from other Grand Valley vineyards and shared a vineyard manager with Bookcliff Vineyards. The Viognier, the winery says, is still its top seller. The Rosé of Mourvèdre comes from 38 ¼ Road in Palisade. The Malbec’s notes compare Palisade’s high desert plain to Mendoza, Argentina. The Cabernet Franc is aged 36 months in Appalachian oak, and the menu ends its entry with the line “This is Franc, Colorado’s Cabernet.” The current Robusto, a blend led by Cabernet Sauvignon, is the house’s seventh. A flight is three two-ounce pours of the guest’s choosing, brought to the table.

A hobby, a bond, and a Cabernet Franc

The winery began in the early 1980s as a hobby of Bill and Anita Donahue. By the winery’s account, it grew into a family business shaped by Anita’s Italian heritage and her family’s habit of sharing wine and food. In 1996 the Donahues were bonded as a Colorado limited winery, and in 2000 they opened Creekside to the public. In 2002 they planted the Palisade vineyard.

Medals followed. The 2010 Cabernet Franc took Best of Show at the 2013 Governor’s Cup. A 2013 rosé and the 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot were later named to the Governor’s Cup Case. The 2014 Cabernet Franc won Best of Show at the 2017 Governor’s Cup. According to Westword, it was also the first Colorado wine to earn 91 points from Wine Enthusiast, with “its licorice bouquet and bracing blackberry and bell-pepper notes.” In February 2018 the Colorado Association for Viticulture and Enology named Creekside its Winery of the Year. Mountain Town Magazine later reported a Double Gold, Best of Category, Best of Show People’s Choice, and a silver at the International Cabernet Franc Competition.

The winemaker in 2018 was Michelle Cleveland. She first came to Creekside as a customer, then left a job in coffee production and distribution to work for the Donahues, earning an online degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis, along the way. “People try one bad Colorado wine and think it’s all bad,” she told Westword. “I’ve had bad wine all over the world, but that hasn’t stopped me from continuing to try it.” She added, “All of our wines pair well with food.” The manager then, Eliot Zizic, said of her: “She’s really stepped up to the plate. We’ve become a destination.”

A new owner from West Palm Beach

In May 2026 Creekside passed to Jaclynn Thoemke. She came to the winery and the town from West Palm Beach, Florida, and bought the business with her family’s support, the winery says, “to preserve its legacy while embracing its future.” Among the wines she took over is a tawny port crafted in 2000, Creekside’s first year, and listed now as twenty-five years in the making.