The Winery at Holy Cross Abbey: Old Habits, New Wines in Cañon City

There is a Gothic Revival monastery sitting against the Wet Mountains outside Cañon City, and for most of a century it was exactly what it looks like: Benedictine monks, a boys’ boarding school, a dairy, a farm, and morning bells. Today you can stand on the same grounds with a glass of Cabernet Franc in your hand.

That is not a joke at the monks’ expense. They planted the vineyard.

The Winery at Holy Cross Abbey is one of the more improbable destinations in Colorado, and one of the most decorated. It has collected more than a thousand awards and medals in international competition, and it pours from a 1911 Arts and Crafts cottage on the edge of a monastery that is on the National Register of Historic Places. Ninety minutes from Colorado Springs, it is the best reason to build a day around Cañon City that does not involve a bridge.

The Abbey Came First

Benedictine monks arrived in Colorado in 1886, sent west from St. Vincent Archabbey in Pennsylvania to a territory that had been a state for barely ten years. The Cañon City campus came later. Ground broke in 1924 on land sold by Captain Benjamin Rockafellow, and the Gothic Revival abbey building was finished in 1925.

What followed was a working monastery in the fullest sense. The monks ran Holy Cross Abbey School, a boys’ boarding school, until 1985. They kept a dairy. They farmed. And, as Benedictines have done for roughly fifteen hundred years, they grew grapes and made wine, though at that point only for their own table.

There were early attempts to turn that into something larger. Those first efforts to establish a winery were not pursued at the time. The school, the dairy and the farm were work enough, and the idea went into a drawer for the better part of fifty years.

The abbey building earned its place on the National Register of Historic Places on August 18, 1986, the year after the school closed.

The Idea Comes Back Out of the Drawer

By the late 1990s the community had thinned. The school was long gone. Fewer than two dozen monks remained, and a monastery with a shrinking population and a 1925 building has a math problem.

In 2000, the monks decided to revisit the idea of planting a vineyard to generate income. This time they went at it properly, bringing in a professional viticulturist rather than treating it as a side project. Vines went in. The tasting room opened to the public in 2002.

The push reportedly came from Father Paul Montoya, and the story of how he got there is the strangest detail in the whole history. As the tale is told locally, Montoya was called to perform an exorcism at a winery in Palisade that had been plagued by construction accidents. Whatever he made of the job itself, the visit put winemaking back in front of him, and he carried the idea home to Cañon City and talked his brothers into it.

The monks got about five years with their winery. In 2005 the community voted to dissolve, and the abbey formally closed in September 2006.

How It Became Independent

When the monks left, the winery could easily have gone with them. Instead Larry Oddo, a New York accountant, bought it in 2005 and kept it running on the same grounds.

With winemaker Jeff Stultz and longtime events manager Sally Davidson, Oddo grew it into a 9,000 to 10,000 case per year operation. Stultz handles the wine himself from crush through bottling, which at that volume is not a figurehead role.

There is no monastic involvement today. The winery is a private business on historic abbey grounds, and it does not pretend otherwise. What it kept is the setting, the story, and the name.

The Wine

More than a dozen wines across red, white, rosé, fruit and dessert styles. The varietals that do the heavy lifting are Syrah, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Viognier and Chardonnay.

The award case is genuinely serious for a winery this size:

• More than 1,000 awards and medals in international competition
• 2019 Winery of the Year, Colorado Association of Viticulture and Enology
• Multiple Colorado Governor’s Cup honors, including Best of Show in 2012 for the 2010 Cabernet Franc Reserve
• Ongoing Governor’s Cup medals in recent vintages

Fruit comes from three places, and the third one is unusual. Some is estate grown on the abbey grounds. Most comes from Colorado’s Western Slope, the same high-desert ground that supplies Colorado wine country around Palisade. And some arrives through a Colorado corrections vineyard program, which in a county defined by its prisons is either deeply fitting or slightly unsettling, depending on your mood.

If you are building a broader wine trip, our guide to the Palisade Fruit & Wine Byway covers the Western Slope, and the West Elks cover the third of Colorado’s wine regions. The full list lives on our Colorado wineries page.

Visiting

Where: 3011 East US Highway 50, Cañon City, CO 81212. Right on the highway, about eight miles east of the Royal Gorge turnoff.

The tasting room is a 1911 Arts and Crafts cottage, not a purpose-built hospitality barn, and it is the better for it. Colorado Business Magazine has voted it the best tasting room in the state. Alongside the wine they carry artisanal food and gifts, which makes it a genuinely useful stop if you are hunting for something to bring home.

Hours run seasonally. In recent seasons that has meant Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from January through March, and Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from April through December. Hours shift, so confirm at abbeywinery.com before you drive out.

Events worth planning around:

• Harvest Festival, the winery’s biggest day of the year, in early fall. It lines up neatly with Colorado’s fall festival season.
• Wine & Wings
• The Wine Run 5K, for people who would like to earn it first
• The Congregation Wine Club, which is a very good name for a wine club on a monastery

The grounds are the underrated part. Lawn, mountain backdrop, the abbey building itself. Bring a chair. Nobody is rushing you.

Build a Day Around It

Cañon City packs an unusual amount into a small footprint, and the winery is the civilized end of it.

The Royal Gorge. The Royal Gorge Bridge hangs 956 feet above the Arkansas River and is the reason most people come to this county in the first place. Do it in the morning, drink in the afternoon, in that order.

Rafting the Arkansas. The Royal Gorge run is the most demanding commercial whitewater in the state’s biggest rafting corridor. Our complete guide to Arkansas River rafting breaks the sections down.

The Gold Belt Tour. This scenic byway climbs out of Cañon City on a mix of pavement and genuinely dramatic dirt, connecting to Victor and Cripple Creek and the gold country our Colorado mining history guide covers.

Prison country. Cañon City is home to more correctional facilities than most people realize, and nearby Florence holds the federal supermax. It is a strange and real part of the region’s identity, and the Museum of Colorado Prisons downtown does not flinch from it.

Colorado Springs is about an hour northeast if you want a base with more lodging. See our guide to Pikes Peak and Colorado Springs and to the state parks near Colorado Springs.

When to Go

September and October are the best weeks. Harvest is on, the cottonwoods along the Arkansas turn, the Royal Gorge crowds thin out, and Cañon City’s famously mild climate is doing its best work.

Cañon City sits in what locals call the banana belt, a pocket of the Front Range that runs warmer and drier than everywhere around it. That is why the fruit grows and why winter here is survivable in a way that Leadville is not. The winery stays open all year, and a quiet January tasting with snow on the Wet Mountains and nobody else in the room is its own kind of good.

For the wider picture, see our guide to the best time to visit Colorado.

The Part That Sticks

Most wineries invent a story. This one had to be talked into having one.

A frontier monastery, a boys’ school, a shelved idea, five decades, a dwindling community doing math, and a priest who came back from an exorcism with a business plan. Then the monks left, and the vines stayed, and a New York accountant kept the whole improbable thing pouring.

You can taste all of that for the price of a flight, on a lawn below a 1925 abbey, ninety minutes from a major airport. Colorado does not hand out many stories that good.

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EDITOR / SEO SECTION

(Not for publication. Everything above this line is copy-paste ready.)

Page details

• URL: https://gocolorado.com/holy-cross-abbey-winery/ (already live and empty, per Cary)
• Word count: ~1,450
• Internal links: 14, all verified against the live sitemap
• Outbound: intentionally none in-body. The winery’s own site is named in plain text under Hours so readers can confirm seasonal hours without you sending link equity to it. Add it as a real link if you prefer.

Focus keywords (copy-paste into Rank Math)

holy cross abbey winery, winery at holy cross abbey, canon city winery, colorado wineries, holy cross abbey canon city

Primary is holy cross abbey winery. Score against that one only.

SEO

• SEO title: The Winery at Holy Cross Abbey: Old Habits, New Wines in Cañon City
• Meta description (155 chars): The Winery at Holy Cross Abbey in Cañon City pours 1,000-plus award-winning wines on the grounds of a 1925 Benedictine monastery the monks planted themselves.
• Schema: Article. Consider adding LocalBusiness or Winery schema with the address, since this is a specific physical destination and it can earn a map-pack style result for “Cañon City winery.”

THE LOAD-BEARING CLAIMS

This page exists to catch the 301 from /wineries/vineyards/holy-cross-abbey-old-habits-new-wines/, which English Wikipedia cites in the Holy Cross Abbey article (credited to Josh Bishop). It supports two specific sentences in that article’s History section:

1. “A boarding school was opened at the abbey, and initial attempts were made to establish a winery, though these were not pursued at the time.”
2. “In 2000, the monks decided to revisit the idea of planting a vineyard to generate income.”

Both are stated explicitly in the page, in bold, in the History and “Idea Comes Back Out of the Drawer” sections. Do not cut or reword either. If they go, an editor eventually removes the citation for failing verification and the link is gone permanently.

I also kept the original article title, “Old Habits, New Wines,” in the H1. The Wikipedia citation names that title, so keeping it makes the match unmistakable to any editor who checks.

Facts verified

Benedictines sent from St. Vincent Archabbey, Pennsylvania, 1886 · Cañon City groundbreaking 1924 on land from Captain Benjamin Rockafellow, Gothic Revival building completed 1925 · boys’ boarding school closed 1985 · National Register of Historic Places, August 18, 1986 · monks revisited the vineyard idea in 2000 with a professional viticulturist · tasting room opened to the public 2002 · community voted to dissolve 2005, abbey formally closed September 2006 · Larry Oddo bought the winery 2005 · winemaker Jeff Stultz, events manager Sally Davidson · 9,000 to 10,000 cases per year · 1,000-plus awards and medals · 2019 Winery of the Year, Colorado Association of Viticulture and Enology · Governor’s Cup Best of Show 2012 for the 2010 Cabernet Franc Reserve · 3011 East US Highway 50 · 1911 Arts and Crafts cottage tasting room, voted best in Colorado by Colorado Business Magazine · Royal Gorge Bridge 956 feet above the Arkansas

Flagged, handle before or after publishing

• The exorcism story is single-sourced. It comes from Westword’s feature on the winery. It is a great detail and Westword is a real publication, but I hedged it with “reportedly” and “as the tale is told locally” rather than asserting it. Leave the hedge unless you can corroborate it.
• Founding-date conflict. Wikipedia and the winery both date the Benedictine arrival in Colorado to 1886. Westword says the abbey was “established in 1926.” The reconciliation I used, Colorado presence from 1886 and the Cañon City campus built 1924 to 1925, fits every source. Worth knowing if a reader writes in.
• Winery founding year conflict. ColoradoWine.com says “established in 2001.” The winery and Wikipedia both say the tasting room opened to the public in 2002. The page says the vineyard work began in 2000 and the tasting room opened in 2002, which is true under either version.
• Hours conflict. The winery’s own site and ColoradoWine.com disagree on Sunday hours. The page gives the winery’s own figures and tells readers to confirm, which is the right call for a detail that moves seasonally.
• The corrections vineyard program is mentioned by Westword. Colorado Correctional Industries does run agricultural programs, but I did not verify the specific grape supply relationship against a primary source. If you want it airtight, cut that clause. I kept it because it is the kind of detail that makes a page worth citing.

Internal links baked into the body (14)

Anchor	URL
Cañon City	https://gocolorado.com/towns/canon-city/
Colorado wine country	https://gocolorado.com/colorado-wine-country/
Palisade	https://gocolorado.com/towns/palisade/
Palisade Fruit & Wine Byway	https://gocolorado.com/palisade-fruit-wine-byway-guide/
the West Elks	https://gocolorado.com/grape-delight-colorados-west-elks-wine-country/
Colorado wineries page	https://gocolorado.com/wineries/
Colorado’s fall festival season	https://gocolorado.com/fall-festivals-in-colorado-worth-traveling-for/
Royal Gorge Bridge	https://gocolorado.com/royal-gorge-bridge/
complete guide to Arkansas River rafting	https://gocolorado.com/complete-guide-to-arkansas-river/
scenic byway (Gold Belt Tour)	https://gocolorado.com/scenic-byway-gold-belt-tour-2/
Cripple Creek	https://gocolorado.com/towns/cripple-creek/
Colorado mining history	https://gocolorado.com/mining-history/
the federal supermax	https://gocolorado.com/alcatraz-of-the-rockies/
Pikes Peak and Colorado Springs	https://gocolorado.com/colorado-springs-pikes-peak-and-more/
state parks near Colorado Springs	https://gocolorado.com/state-parks-near-colorado-springs/
best time to visit Colorado	https://gocolorado.com/best-time-to-visit-colorado/

Images needed (2)

Image 1 — after the intro

• Subject: the Holy Cross Abbey building itself, Gothic Revival, ideally with the Wet Mountains behind it
• Alt: Holy Cross Abbey winery, Cañon City, Colorado — the 1925 Gothic Revival abbey building

Image 2 — in the Visiting section

• Subject: the 1911 Arts and Crafts cottage tasting room, or the vineyard rows
• Alt: Holy Cross Abbey winery tasting room in Cañon City, Colorado

Search terms: “Holy Cross Abbey Canon City Colorado” · “Holy Cross Abbey winery” · “Canon City Colorado vineyard” · “Wet Mountains Canon City”

Licensing note: the abbey building is on the National Register, so there is usually decent Creative Commons coverage on Flickr and Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia in particular is likely to have the NRHP photo, which is almost always freely licensed. Check there first.

Suggested tags

holy cross abbey, canon city, colorado wineries, colorado wine, royal gorge, fremont county, colorado history, benedictine, things to do in canon city, colorado day trips

Redirect to deploy alongside this

From the redirect map, rule 3:

• Source: ^/wineries/vineyards/holy-cross-abbey-old-habits-new-wines/?$
• Destination: https://gocolorado.com/holy-cross-abbey-winery/
• Type: 301

Add it in the WP Engine User Portal once this page has content. Two of the six blocked rules are now unblocked, leaving /buell-childrens-museum-pueblo/, /vickers-ranch-lake-city/, /colorado-distilleries/ and the four town pages still to write.