Black Forest Has Its Own Friday Night Now
March 26, 2026
March 26, 2026
For years the trade-off was understood: you move to the pines for the space, the quiet, and the Ponderosa views — and you drive south when you want dinner somewhere worth talking about. That trade-off is getting harder to defend.
In the 18 months since Latigo Winery opened its tasting room on Black Forest Road, it has earned a Gazette Best of the Springs bronze award faster than most places accumulate the reviews to compete. Black Forest Brewing Company has been pulling residents off their acreage with a weekly Thursday run-and-drink event long enough for it to feel like a standing obligation. The Black Forest Community Center, built by volunteers in 1929, fills its log-walled hall monthly for live acoustic concerts. And every Memorial Day weekend, the La Foret Conference & Retreat Center becomes the site of one of the region's largest outdoor music festivals — drawing attendees into Black Forest from the rest of the Front Range.
The scene isn't new. It's just grown dense enough to notice.
Latigo Winery sits at 11425 Black Forest Road, at the corner of Black Forest Road and Burgess. Ben and Lisa Nelson — both with long careers in food and beverage, Ben as a lead brewer and chef — opened the tasting room in June 2024 after five years of selling bottles to local breweries, restaurants, and wine festivals. The New Falcon Herald reported that Latigo won the Gazette's 2025 Best of the Springs bronze award before it had completed its first full year with a public tasting room. The winery is projecting 800 cases of production in 2026, more than double the 350 cases produced the year prior.
The format is built for staying a while: build-your-own wine flights using grapes from Colorado Western Slope vineyards, plus sangria, wine slushies, mead from a local meadery, and a Colorado cider. Food trucks rotate through on a regular schedule — Pizzarte Tradizionale Italiano parks here on Thursdays for wood-fired pizza nights; Bebo Rae's Tex-Mex BBQ and a western teppanyaki truck have also pulled up on the patio. Craft workshops, paint-and-sip events, and sommelier-guided tastings led by Shelley Bailey of Shelley's Somm Collective round out the calendar year-round. Dogs and kids are welcome on the outdoor patio.
Black Forest Brewing Company runs a different rhythm. The weekly Thirsty Thursday Fun Run draws regulars who loop back to the taproom after their miles; Sunday brunches bring a catered meal format the brewery has sustained for years. For private events — reunions, brew tastings, group gatherings — the space books directly through the brewery.
Black Forest Bistro occupies a historic building and serves contemporary American food with a full bar, a rotating craft beer selection, and local wines. The format holds for a casual weeknight, a family dinner, or a special occasion without shifting registers awkwardly between them.
Mountain View Cafe and Catering is the breakfast-and-lunch institution: family-owned, known for biscuits and gravy, hearty omelets, and a catering operation that has made it the default for neighborhood gatherings. Walters 303 Pizzeria and Publick House draws regulars with New York-style pies, specialty options, and a bar atmosphere that skews toward groups. Firehouse on the Run offers slow-cooked Southern barbecue and housemade sauces, with enough of a laid-back setting and occasional live music to hold a table through the evening.
For a special occasion dinner, The Steakhouse at Flying Horse — within the Flying Horse community at the northern edge of Colorado Springs — is the fine-dining option closest to Black Forest, with prime steaks, fresh seafood, and an extensive wine list.
Five named venues within a short drive of each other. A few years ago that sentence would have felt like a stretch.
The social infrastructure in Black Forest doesn't organize itself around a commercial strip. It runs through the Black Forest Community Club, a volunteer organization chartered in 1929 that occupies a hand-built log community center at the corner of Black Forest and Shoup Roads. Membership is $15 per year and includes a monthly newsletter.
The Community Center hosts Black Rose Acoustic Society concerts on a monthly schedule — shows ran in January, February, and December of last year and continue through 2026. The hall also houses the Black Forest Line Dancers, now in their fourth year of weekly Sunday classes running from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., covering hip-hop, country, Latin, and ballroom. Classes are donation-based, with all proceeds going to the Community Center's operating fund.
Latigo Winery has already knitted itself into this calendar. The 2025 Black Forest Biergarten fundraiser, held to install air conditioning in the Community Center, used the winery as its venue. Tickets were $35 and covered admission, live music from Wirewood Station, and a custom pint glass — the kind of local cross-pollination that signals a scene rather than a collection of individual businesses.
Every Memorial Day weekend, the direction reverses.
The MeadowGrass Music Festival runs May 22-24, 2026 at La Foret Conference & Retreat Center — a property of several hundred acres of forest, canyons, and historic buildings, 30 minutes from downtown Colorado Springs. Organized by Rocky Mountain Highway, the festival has run annually since its founding and brings roughly 20 artists each year across folk, bluegrass, funk, and roots genres. The 2026 lineup was announced February 17 at a release party held at Goat Patch Brewing in Colorado Springs. Axios Colorado Springs describes it as "relaxed, rootsy and decidedly family friendly." Kids 12 and under get in free with a paid adult; weekend passes start at $55. Tent camping is available on-site, and a beer festival, guided hikes, yoga sessions, and food vendors fill the non-music hours.
For Black Forest residents, this is the weekend the rest of the Front Range shows up at your door.
The businesses and institutions above aren't a flash of new development. They're a mix of century-old community anchors and recent additions that have found each other. The Community Center that has been standing since 1929 now has a winery down the road that won a citywide award in its first year. The brewery has sustained recurring weekly events long enough to make leaving the neighborhood on a Thursday feel like a choice rather than a necessity.
If you live here and haven't made it to Latigo yet, or haven't checked the Black Rose Acoustic Society's spring concert schedule, or haven't blocked out Memorial Day weekend for MeadowGrass — this is the season to close those gaps.
When you're ready to think about the real estate side of Black Forest, Pulse Real Estate Group is here. Scott Coddington and the team are third-generation Front Range locals who know this market at the street level. Request a free home valuation or reach out to talk through what's happening across El Paso County — no pressure, just straight answers.
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