Old Westminster Winery to break ground on new tasting room

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Old Westminster Winery

Workers drill a well for Old Westminster Winery's new tasting building.

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Sarah Meehan

Reporter- Baltimore Business Journal

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When Old Westminster Winery reopens for tours and tastings next year, the winery will welcome visitors with a new tasting room.

The well is drilled and the Carroll County winery is preparing to break ground on a $500,000 tasting facility in the coming weeks.

"It's going to be a really upscale barn-style building. We're going for that country chic feel," Drew Baker, one of the winery's cofounders, said. "We really want to create a building that reflects our brand."

The building will have the capacity for about 100 people inside, with outdoor seating, as well. A large pergola next to the building will be topped with a solar panel, which will power the building.

The winery closed for the season two weeks ago, and it's aiming to reopen with the new tasting room by June 1.

To date the tasting area has been housed within the winery's production facility, on an outdoor patio used as a crush pad for grapes. Building a standalone tasting room was always in the master plan for the family-owned winery, which opened in 2013.

"We didn't know how quickly we were going to get there," Baker said.

The winery saw as many as 300 people on several Saturdays this summer.

"It really opened our eyes to the fact that there's obviously demand," Baker said. "At this point we're nearly sold out of all of our wines."

As the tasting room moves out of the winery, Old Westminster is also preparing to increase its production by 30 percent next year. The winery produced about 1,000 cases of wine this year.

The Baker family is planting 3,000 new vines next year — mostly albariño grapes — adding to the 7,600 vines it has on its home farm. Old Westminster's 2013 Estate Albariño won "Best White Wine" at the Maryland's Governor's Cup this year.

"We can't make enough of it," Baker said.

Sarah covers hospitality/tourism, minority business, marketing and new media