Beginning next year, oenophiles in Baltimore City will be able to enjoy a traditional winery much closer to home. Urban winery and custom winemaking facility, The Wine Collective, plans to debut inside Union Collective—the hotspot near Hampden that transformed a former Sears Roebuck warehouse into a sprawling marketplace and brewery last year—in February of 2020.
The complex already hosts Union Craft Brewing’s production space and taproom, as well as celebrated distillery Baltimore Spirits Co., so it seems only fitting that a winery joins the ranks next. The Wine Collective is a concept from partners John Levenberg, an award-winning winemaker, and Enrique Pallares who, with his wife and brother, owns boutique winery Casa Carmen in Chestertown, Maryland on the Eastern Shore.
“We’ll be a sort of co-op of wineries,” explains Pallares. “Several partner wineries will have their wines made here. We’ll have grapes coming in from several different parts of the state, and we’ll make the wine for them, and then they’ll take the wine back to their tasting rooms.”
