Fountain Creek Winery & Eatery

Fountain Creek Winery & Eatery occupies a large building at 606 South Santa Fe Avenue, on the south end of Fountain, just off the Santa Fe exit of Interstate 25. When it opened, FOX21 News described the surrounding area as mostly fast food. The dining room is done in what the house calls the style of a Tuscan villa. A seasonal patio runs alongside Fountain Creek. Lunch, dinner, coffee, dessert, and bottles to go are sold seven days a week. The owners, Susan and Don Quintana, describe the business as family owned.

Barrels from the Western Slope

The wine is blended and labeled on the premises from barrels the Quintanas buy, mainly from Colorado’s Western Slope and partly from other viticultural areas in the country. Don, a general contractor by trade, is the winemaker and taught himself the work. Susan told Matthew Schniper of the newsletter Side Dish that her husband “has a knack and palate for wine, and can blind-taste and pick out grapes.” Fruit comes from Palisade, bought from C&R Farms, a company owned by Susan’s sister. According to Schniper, the house has become known for a wide range of light, sweet, easy-drinking fruit wines. In August 2026 it began pouring a new plum wine. FOX21 reported that wines from other Colorado wineries are also on the list.

Schniper tasted through four wines in February 2025. Bodacious 5 is a Bordeaux-style blend, and he found it highly tannic, deep, and rich. Rojo Lindo blends four grapes; he found it lighter from its Pinot Noir, with a spice bite from its Zinfandel. Pomegranate Red mixes real pomegranate juice with a Burgundy blend. To him it started a touch syrupy and sweet and finished dry. The seasonal cranberry-apple wine blushed pink like a rosé, and Susan said it usually holds three apple varieties from C&R. The drinks list also offers sangrias, brandy-based cocktails, winetinis, spritzers, and lemonade infusions.

Susan says the house sells more red wine in Fountain than it did in Old Colorado City, where tourists preferred sweet wines. She credits a “more mature crowd” in Fountain, made up largely of ex-military residents who have traveled internationally. Some customers drive regularly from Kansas and from Texas to carry cases home, since the winery no longer ships.

A Sicilian on asiago-basil bread

Lunch runs until 4 p.m. and covers tapas, salads, soups, and sandwiches. FOX21 listed charcuterie boards among the opening offerings and said the kitchen uses locally sourced ingredients. Schniper ordered a mixed green salad with pickled onions, white cheese, and a basil vinaigrette. The dish he wrote about at length was the Sicilian sandwich: pepperoni, ham, salami, Swiss, pickled red onions, pickles, tomatoes, and tomato aioli. It comes on asiago-basil bread baked at Styria Bakery II in Denver and is warmed in a panini press. The bread arrives twice a week, and customers can buy whole loaves at the counter.

Dinner centers on nightly chef’s specials. In the summer and fall of 2026 these included:

• a teriyaki bowl with salmon fillet or chicken breast
• teriyaki ribeye over rice
• a brown sugar apple pork chop
• chicken cacciatore in a house heirloom tomato sauce

That August, a dinner for two at $65 was offered Monday through Wednesday from 4 to 8 p.m. It included one tapas plate, two entrées, and one dessert to share. On the sweeter side, the coffee menu carries a crème brûlée chai. In September 2026 the kitchen served a cobbler of Palisade peaches “while they last,” poured alongside a glass of peach wine.

The patio, the park, and the party room

On a Thursday evening in August 2026, the winery showed The Mask of Zorro on the patio beginning at 8:30. Guests ate dinner first, then took a patio table or spread a blanket. The house billed the screening as weather dependent.

On Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., the winery runs a stand at the Old Colorado City Farmers Market in Bancroft Park. It pours free tastings of the fruit wines and sells bottles to go. One post names Gabby as the person working the stand.

The building also hosts private gatherings without a room fee. These range from cocktail hours to coursed dinners, and from baby showers and milestone birthdays to weddings.

From Old Colorado City to the creek

Before Fountain, the Quintanas spent twelve years in Old Colorado City running The Sweet Elephant at Vino Colorado Winery. Susan told Schniper that a tenant upstairs had caused fire damage to that space and that the rent was rising. The couple sold their home in the Broadmoor area, bought a house in Fountain, and purchased the creekside building.

The new place opened on New Year’s Eve. Writing in February 2025, Schniper put the opening two years earlier. Susan told FOX21 how the move came about: “The people have been so warm and inviting. We knew they would be because our daughter has a winery tasting room up in Old Colorado City and because of that, people who live here and in Pueblo would come there and that’s how we met that community and then we thought that people who live in Pueblo and here don’t have to go to Old Colorado City to get a bottle of wine.” Laura Gennitti, an employee, told the station, “A lot of Fountain people and Security-Widefield, they were like ‘Oh my goodness, I cannot wait till it opens here’, just like us.”

In September 2026 the house marked an anniversary and a birthday for Donna and Greg, two regulars who have come in on Sundays nearly every week since the doors opened.