If the forests surrounding Estes Park had a flavor, it might taste something like the newest candy coming off the puller at The Taffy Shop.
Sweet and caramel-like at first. Then citrus, herbs, and the aromatic suggestion of a mountain forest.
And, no, it does not taste like Pine-Sol.
Ponderosa Twist salt water taffy is the result of an only-in-Estes Park collaboration between two local businesses — one that has been making candy on Elkhorn Avenue for 91 years and another that turns young Rocky Mountain pine cones and buds into an artisan syrup rooted in a centuries-old European tradition.
The Taffy Shop and Rocky Mountain Mugolio have combined their specialties to create something neither business could produce alone.
“It is a product that tells the story of Estes Park through flavor,” said Mark Igel, owner of The Taffy Shop. “It gives visitors the opportunity to literally take home a taste of the forests surrounding the community and Rocky Mountain National Park.”
For Scott Larrimore, founder of Rocky Mountain Mugolio, the new candy is also an example of what can happen when small-town businesses look beyond their own front doors.
“Most communities have businesses that operate side by side,” Larrimore said. “We believe the real opportunity comes when local businesses combine their talents.”
“The Taffy Shop is exceptional at making world-class taffy. We’re passionate about creating unique flavors from Colorado’s forests,” he said. “Together we’ve created something that is authentically Estes Park.”
Pine cones, sugar, and time
The simplest description of mugolio is pine-cone syrup, but its flavor is considerably more complex.
Mugolio traces its roots to Europe’s alpine regions, where young pine cones and buds have traditionally been combined with sugar and left to macerate. Over time, the sugar draws moisture and aromatic compounds from the cones, creating a concentrated syrup.
Rocky Mountain Mugolio uses that old-world process with young cones and buds foraged from Colorado forests.
The result is darker and more aromatic than maple syrup, layered with the resinous fragrance of pine, rosemary, eucalyptus, and the smell of fresh mountain air.
Flavor, after all, is as much about the nose as the tongue. Taste buds recognize sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and savory. The nose adds thousands of aromas that help the brain put the entire experience together.
With mugolio, those aromas seem to shift with every taste.
“It has a real nice flavor, but not too sweet,” one Estes Valley Farmers Market customer told Larrimore.
Another customer was more succinct: “I’ve never tasted anything like it.”
A rocket scientist walks into a forest
Larrimore’s path to pine cone syrup did not begin in a commercial kitchen.
It began in engineering school and eventually took him into some of the nation’s most sophisticated military space programs.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Princeton University and a master’s degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from Purdue University, specializing in rocket propulsion.
Larrimore then built a career in the U.S. Air Force and military space operations.
He worked at Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station and the Pentagon, led satellite operations teams, and managed programs for missile-warning and military-weather satellites. At one point, he led a 250-person team responsible for the development, deployment, and sustainment of the Air Force’s $150 million-a-year weather satellite portfolio.
He helped launch and commission a $500 million Defense Meteorological Satellite Program spacecraft and worked on the Space-Based Infrared System, where his team overcame technical problems that threatened the first SBIRS geostationary satellite.
In other words, Larrimore has spent much of his career studying complex systems.
These days, one of those systems involves pine cones, sugar, temperature, and time.
Rocky Mountain Mugolio grew from a simple idea: Take one of Colorado’s most overlooked natural resources and turn it into a gourmet food.
Larrimore gathers young cones and buds from Rocky Mountain forests and produces the syrup in small, seasonal batches. The company works with six conifer varieties: Ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, lodgepole pine, limber pine, bristlecone pine, and pinyon pine.
Each produces a different flavor. Tree species, elevation, season, and harvest conditions all influence the finished syrup. Like honey or wine, no two batches are necessarily identical.
Ponderosa pine has emerged as the company’s signature flavor.
Rocky Mountain Mugolio began selling syrup at farmers markets last summer. Earlier this month, the company transitioned from production under Colorado’s Cottage Foods Act to licensed commercial food manufacturing, allowing its products to enter retail stores and restaurant kitchens and to ship nationwide.
Larrimore has also developed an Alpine Energy Gel, mugolio-infused honey, and a wild alpine bitter.
The syrup can be drizzled over pancakes, waffles, ice cream, or yogurt. It pairs with cheese and charcuterie, roasted squash, salmon, and pork. Bartenders can use it in craft cocktails.
A little goes a long way. But putting it in salt water taffy presented an entirely different challenge.
A 91-year-old recipe meets the forest
The Taffy Shop does not change quickly. That is part of its charm.
The tiny candy shop at 121 W. Elkhorn Ave. has been making salt water taffy since 1935. For generations, families have crowded around its front window to watch taffy stretch across its antique mechanical puller before being cut and wrapped.
A stop at the shop has become part of the Estes Park experience for visitors year after year. Walking through the front door is like stepping back into a day of yesteryear.
Igel purchased The Taffy Shop from the Slack family in 2014 and became the caretaker of a recipe and candy-making tradition nearly eight decades old at the time.
He moved to town in 1988 at 19 with about $1,000. He managed the Stanley Village Cinemas, trained as an EMT and paramedic, and worked at Estes Park Medical Center for two decades.
He founded and operated Signs of Life, owned the Reel Mountain Theater, and served on the Estes Valley Fire Protection District Board. A volunteer firefighter for more than 30 years, Igel has served as a firefighter, lieutenant, and engineer.
He married and raised a family of seven children in Estes Park. In 2024, voters elected Igel to the Estes Park Town Board of Trustees. Most days, however, he can still be found at The Taffy Shop, where candy making remains a decidedly hands-on business.
When Larrimore brought mugolio to the shop, simply pouring pine cone syrup into the taffy recipe wasn’t going to work. So Rocky Mountain Mugolio developed a concentrated version of its Ponderosa pine flavor. Larrimore then worked with The Taffy Shop’s candy makers to adapt it to the taffy-making process.
The trick was balance. Too little mugolio and the forest disappeared beneath the sugar. Too much and the pine’s aromatic qualities overwhelmed the candy.
The finished taffy keeps the soft, melt-in-your-mouth texture The Taffy Shop is known for, but the flavor goes somewhere new.
An Estes Park flavor
Tourism towns sell plenty of souvenirs: T-shirts, coffee mugs, magnets, elk ornaments, stickers. But saltwater taffy infused with mugolio is something unique.
The flavor begins in Rocky Mountain forests with young pine cones and buds. Larrimore uses an alpine tradition to transform them into mugolio. The concentrated flavor then travels to a candy shop that has been pulling taffy on Elkhorn Avenue since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president.
One local business understands the flavors hidden in Colorado’s forests. The other understands how to turn sugar, heat, and tradition into a candy generations of visitors associate with Estes Park.
Together, they have put a little bit of the forest in a piece of taffy and wrapped it in cellophane.
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