Deep Roots Winery is being transplanted to Golden, making it the second winery to leave RiNo this month.
The eatery and taproom at 2875 Blake St., which has been operating there since 2021, will close Dec. 15 and reopen in mid-January at 1375 Catamount Drive.
But the cuisine and food won’t make the trip west.
“We’re really looking forward to just focusing on the wine,” says Teara Walters, who owns the spot with her husband Steve.
The grapes are supplemented with hard ciders and lemonade wines, two lines they can focus on expanding because they won’t be making food themselves. For those in need of a bite, rotating food trucks will visit the new 3,000-square-foot space.
Fellow RiNo winery Infinite Monkey Theorem will also close at the end of this month due to rising costs and declining wine sales. It won’t move.
Deep Roots’ move, Walters said, will help the company reduce costs and offset declining revenues over the past two years.
“We expect to start slowly, but hope to build a following,” she said. “Now that we’re leaving the kitchen, we’re also going to work on distribution. We didn’t do that because we couldn’t produce enough volume with the food.”
The Walters signed a three-year lease in June for the Golden Spot, which is far from downtown but a few blocks from gluten-free brewer Holidaily. The rent is about half of what Deep Roots paid for its 5,000-square-foot RiNo spot, she said.
“It was always our intention to open a location in Golden,” Walters said, noting they live there. “Once we realized that business wasn’t going to recover from COVID, it was about getting the permits in order and timing them appropriately.”
The workforce will also be smaller, with only two part-time employees instead of the four part-time and one full-time they currently have. Walters also said they expect to hire two more part-timers in the summer.
The pair have moved equipment to the new location and expect to complete the job once they close in the middle of this month. Construction on the bar also begins this week, adding to a “relatively move-in ready” space with a patio overlooking the foothills.
Walters said the $30,000 project will be entirely self-funded and noted the price tag is much more manageable than the $400,000 RiNo renovation.
Walters, along with her sister and husband, initially opened Deep Roots in 2017 at 1516 Wazee St. in LoDo. They leased the larger space in RiNo for a second location just before the COVID-19 pandemic and initially targeted a March or April 2020 opening. But Deep Roots ultimately didn’t debut locally until July 2021.
“It was a tough way to enter a new location,” Walters said. “It’s been a struggle.”
The original LoDo location closed in February 2022. Around that time, Walter’s sister – who had been general manager and chef of Deep Roots – moved to Germany when her military husband was stationed there.
“The past few summers just haven’t looked like they used to,” she said. “We saw a pop in ’22, but ’23 and ’24 were both in steady decline.”
The husband and wife toyed with the idea of operating in both RiNo and Golden, but if attendance dropped again in 2024, that would have been unsustainable, she said. They also all work full-time as care consultants, together with three children, which also keeps them busy.
“It’s one of those things where we thought it would be fun to do what we love again,” Walters said.
Wineries aren’t the only beverage option facing challenges in RiNo. 14er Brewing closed last month after an eight-year run.