They have 40 taps for you to pour your own beer. Or wine. Or mixed-drinks. But mostly beer.

And what pairs better with beer than pizza? Don’t think too hard about that one. Just say nothing pairs better with beer than pizza, and let’s move on.

Palisade Pizza & PourHouse, which opened March 1 and had its grand opening the weekend leading to St. Patrick’s Day, brought a pour wall to Palisade. It also found what appears to be a perfect business pairing in the building at 785 Elberta Ave., which has two suites. Suite A is where Deroco Cellars took up residence after James and Laura Sanders bought the nearly 13,000-square-foot building and accompanying 4.73 acres for $2.9 million in mid-December 2022.

Deroco Cellars partners with Colorado wineries, many of them in the Palisade area, to sell wines, and seven of those are on tap at Palisade Pizza & PourHouse.

The idea for the pour wall, according to James Sanders’ youngest brother, Russell McBreen, was inspired by a trip to Denver. McBreen, part of the ownership trio with Sanders and middle brother Aaron Woolsey, said they were struggling to determine how the approximately 7,000-square-foot space next to Deroco should be used.

“We didn’t really know what to do with the whole space,” McBreen said, “because we don’t make wine, because we’re peach farmers. And we were traveling up in Denver and saw this idea of a pour wall and just fell in love with it. And that’s kind of how it started off for us wanting to start a restaurant.”

The beers on tap include a variety of local and in-state brewers, such as Palisade Brewing Company and The Rock Slide Brew Pub locally, and Breckenridge Brewery and New Belgium Brewing Company.

The variety of beers is wide in order to satisfy most preferences.

Then, there’s the pizza, which McBreen seemed more excited to discuss than the beer, and he was plenty excited about the beer.

For starters, he said, the pizzas use an Italian flour, Caputo, to make the crust. One of the nice things about it, he said, is even though it’s not gluten-free, many people with gluten sensitivities can eat it.

“If people travel over to Europe or overseas, and you’re eating a lot of bread over there and you’re gluten sensitive, you can eat bread all over the place, because it’s not so high in gluten,” McBreen said. “We’re using the same flour, and that’s what gives (Palisade Pizza & PourHouse’s crust) such a good, rich, high quality. And that’s where we start with our pizzas is a high-quality flour.”

He said a family member with high sensitivity to gluten ate pizza made with the Caputo flour “and loves it,” then added, “We do have gluten-free options, but we have a lot of people who have come in who have eaten the pizza and are gluten sensitive and haven’t had issues with it.”

From the dough, McBreen turned to the red sauce, which is made in-house, and told the story of its selection.

“It was trial and error,” he said. “We went around town and tried a lot of pizza sauces. We tried making them off recipes online, and what we found is we came up with 20 different samples that we just made in house and tried them all and had our whole family – so there’s 50, 60 of us – that came out and all tried them.”

Then, they all voted on their favorite, and the winner was nearly unanimous.

“It was like 48 to 2,” McBreen said of the vote in favor of a sauce that uses peeled, whole, plum tomatoes and a mix of ingredients that includes a hint of paste, “just enough to kind of help thicken it up a little bit.

“I don’t really know what everyone in the family (liked about it), why it’s so good. Everyone was just like, ‘This is it. This is the one.’”

McBreen said the menu includes 12 pizzas at the moment, plus a build-your-own option, and the pizza offerings will grow. In addition to the ones with red sauce, Palisade Pizza & PourHouse has ones based on pesto, peanut Thai Sauce, barbecue and Buffalo chicken.

“We’re gonna do seasonal pizzas,” McBreen said. “I know eventually we’re gonna make kind of an Alfredo-based pizza. We might make a Philly cheese pizza. We’re gonna do a margherita pizza. We’ll do a taco pizza. But a lot of those will kind of be filling in seasonally.”

McBreen figures the pizza, beer and wine will do the heavy lifting to bring in customers, but there are other elements he expects to be a draw, such as the large, elevated patio with beautiful mountain views to the north and east.

“The valley, right here on our upstairs patio it’s a perfect view,” he said. “Like yesterday (Sunday, March 16), the weather was beautiful, 5 o’clock and our whole patio was stocked to the brim, full upstairs and downstairs of just people, enjoying a beer outside, having a good pizza, just having the time of their life.”

Then, there’s the large outdoors area where customers will be able to hang out, and Palisade Pizza & PourHouse plans to fill it with activities.

“The biggest thing that makes this place stand out compared to anywhere else is we’re on five acres of grass,” McBreen said. “We’re gonna put volleyball nets outside, we’re gonna build a playground outside, there’s gonna be horseshoes, badminton, I think we’re gonna do cornhole, and we’re gonna plant trees out there.

“Because again, like I was saying, we’re peach farmers. We do a lot of U-Pick tours with our peach farm (Palisade Peach Shack). … We’re gonna plant an acre of nothing but apples and pears. So, you can come and sit in the orchard, on a picnic table and enjoy the day, or go out there and pick some fruit that’s fresh right here.”