History

Born to be a “Garagiste”!

The journey started years ago in a small apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan where I made my first wine from currants. Move forward a few years and I’m in Boston, Massachusetts, working at a home winemaking store and looking for a job in California. Without the Internet, the job search was difficult, and I never made it to California. Instead, I made pilgrimages every fall to New York State, Pennsylvania, and the fruit markets in Chelsea and Everett.

Somewhere along the road, I got this hair-brained idea that I could make wine as good or better than what I was tasting from local wineries. For several years, I went through multiple iterations of business plans, looked for affordable land in southeast Massachusetts, and worked in a vineyard. The vineyard travails made me realize that my future was not as a farmer. That realization and the knowledge that Massachusetts did not require wineries to own their own source of fruit were the catalysts for my jump into commercial winemaking.

In 2005 Neponset Winery opened its doors in Walpole, Massachusetts. Since then, we’ve moved to Needham, first at 50 Kearney Rd, where we made wine and history. Needham is a (semi) dry town. While you can buy a drink in a restaurant, there are no bars or liquor stores. There is also no written record of anyone selling a bottle of alcoholic beverage in Needham – legally – before we moved into town. Farm wineries, of which Neponset Winery is one, are allowed to sell their wines by the bottle for consumption off-premises, regardless of the town’s by-laws. So, in October 2007, we sold the first bottle of alcoholic beverages in the history of Needham.

In mid-2009, we moved again – to another garage! This time we’re at a location where we can’t have a tasting room or retail presence. We’ll miss meeting new customers, talking about wine with them, and hearing the cash register go ka-ching!

But you can still purchase our wines right here on this website and at at wine shops in the Boston area. The Events page on this website will let you know where you can taste our wines, or you can follow us on FaceBook and Twitter.

Neponset Winery in Walpole

Our First Customer

Our Kearney Rd. Tasting Room from three perspectives (below)