Featured Event
Ohio Wine Delivery Event
Date: November, 2026 at 6:00 PM
Location: Pearl 21 Eleven: 2119 Westheimer Rd, Houston, TX 77098
Ohio: Where Glaciers Left a Wine List
A Pour Across America Wine Discovery. Taste the story in every glass.
Event Details
- When
- Saturday, November 2026|6:00 PM
- Where
- Pearl 21 Eleven, 2119 Westheimer Rd, Houston, TX 77098
- Tickets
- Tasting: $75
Tasting + three Ohio bottles to take home: $200 - Members
- RSVP for your Ohio delivery and tasting. Your first guest joins free.
Ages 21+. Seats are limited.
Picture rolling hills running down to the edge of Lake Erie, vineyards catching the last of the evening light off the water.
It doesn’t look like what most people expect from Ohio.
That’s exactly why I went.
01 · The LandThe Story Starts With Ice
About 14,000 years ago, the last great ice sheet was pulling back from northern Ohio. As it melted, it left the land layered with sand, gravel, and clay, and it left behind a basin that would fill to become Lake Erie.
As a geophysicist, this is the part of Ohio I can’t stop thinking about. Those glacial soils drain beautifully. And the lake works like a giant thermal battery. It holds summer heat into the fall, giving grapes extra weeks to ripen, then keeps spring cool enough to delay budbreak until the worst of the frost has passed.
Growers here joke that the lake does half their farming for them.
It’s the reason this corner of the Midwest makes wine at all.
~14,000 yrs
since the ice sheet pulled back
Sand, gravel, clay
glacial soils that drain beautifully
Sand, gravel, clay
glacial soils that drain beautifully
02 · The History
When Ohio Was America’s Wine Capital
Long before Napa became a household name, there was Cincinnati.
In the 1820s, a Cincinnati lawyer named Nicholas Longworth planted Catawba grapes along the Ohio River. He went on to create America’s first commercially successful sparkling wine, and by 1859, Ohio was producing more wine than any other state in the country, over a third of the nation’s total.
Then it unraveled. Disease tore through the river vineyards, and the Civil War pulled away the people who worked them. Winemaking moved north to the Lake Erie shore and islands, where it thrived until Prohibition shut it down.
It took decades for Ohio wine to come back. When it did, it came back on its own terms: modern, unpretentious, and quietly excellent.
Longworth plants Catawba along the Ohio River
Ohio leads the nation, over a third of America’s wine
Lake Erie winemaking shuts down
Modern, unpretentious, and quietly excellent
03 · The RoadWhy I Went
Grand River Cellars
In the Grand River Valley, just inland from the lake, Cindy walked me through her Cabernet Franc Rosé, a few miles from water still doing its glacial work.
M Cellars
At M Cellars, Kelly poured me through a lineup with real depth.
Baci
At Baci, Lauren was so unpretentious about her craft that I forgot I was supposed to be taking notes.
Nobody plans a wine trip to Ohio. This past July, I did.
I went for a handful of bottles and came home having met winemakers who would stop me in my tracks anywhere in the world. No performance. No pretense. Just people who have spent years learning exactly what their land can do
In every glass, I found what I look for everywhere I travel: a real connection between the wine, the land, and the person who made it.
Those are the discoveries I’m bringing home to Houston.
Featured Experience
Six hand-selected Ohio wines
Learn how glaciers and Lake Erie shape every bottle
Hear how Ohio became America’s wine capital, and how it came back
Meet the winemakers of the Grand River Valley through stories from the road
Food pairings chosen for each pour
Taste one of America’s most unexpected wine regions
Come curious. I’ll pour the wine and tell you where it took me.
Ages 21+. Seats are limited.