Hopewell Winery is looking to open a location in downtown Warrenton

By Jack Underwood, Staff Writer

Hopewell Winery is located in Summer Hill, Illinois, directly across from Louisiana, Missouri, and the winery is opening a bar and restaurant in downtown Warrenton at 209 E Booneslick Road.

Owner Jeremy Wombles said he hopes to open the bar on Oct. 26 and plans to open the restaurant at a later date.

“We’re hoping to open this weekend, that’s our target date right now, and it will just be the tasting bar area and we’ll have seating outside on the patio,” Wombles said.

The Warrenton location seems a long way from their winery across the river, but Wombles said the downtown storefront was a perfect fit.

“It was actually the versatility of the building itself that made it a perfect fit,” Wombles said. “It had exactly what we were looking for.”

Those qualities included the store’s location in the heart of downtown Warrenton, where it will be open to heavier foot traffic and located on a busy city street.

The building also already had a kitchen with an extractor hood and two separate bars installed, which Wombles would like to use.

The winery originally opened in Illinois in 2007 and offers a selection of sweet and dry wines with an emphasis on fruit wines, according to Wombles.

“We have semi-dry, semi-sweet fruit wines, we also have sweet wines, and it’s really hard to decide which is the most popular, but I think one of the most popular wines that we have on our list would probably be our cherry wine,” said Wombles.

While the winery does not produce its own grapes or other fruits, Wombles said that every wine it offers is made in-house and that they even produce wines for some other vineyards that lack the expertise or capacity to produce them themselves .

“Everything we sell at Hopewell is actually the wine we make,” Wombles said.

In addition to its wine offerings, Hopewell plans to open a restaurant offering seafood, homemade platters and pizza. There have been some delays in updating the kitchen, but Wombles said he plans to have that open by 2025 as well.

“When you come in, your first experience will be at the tasting bar, and from there traffic will flow into the dining room,” Wombles said.

Hopewell received site plan approval and a conditional use permit from the Warrenton Board of Aldermen to operate a bar in the C-2 downtown general commercial district.

Hopewell has also secured its liquor license from the state of Missouri, meaning the only obstacles to opening are renovations to the building itself, which Wombles hopes to have completed by the end of the year.