Md. winery can see the forest from the trees as construction on 'unique' tasting room begins
The anticipated opening date is January or February 2027.
The Live Edge Vineyards project has turned the corner and is finally headed for home.
Melissa Schulte, the general manager at Black Ankle Vineyards, said in an email earlier this month that, after a wait of more than a year, they obtained their permit to build the winery in Clarksburg, Maryland, on May 1. Construction, she added, on the winery at 25201 Peach Tree Road is underway.
Live Edge is Black Ankle’s sister winery, both owned by Ed Boyce and Sarah O’Herron. The winery, located just off Route 270 and around a 50-mionute drive from Washington, D.C., is projected to open in January or February 2027, capping an endeavor that began more than a decade ago.
You can find a Facebook post dated July 3, 2018, announcing the name of the new winery. As they wrote in the post explaining the meaning of the name: “Often it is the little imperfections in things that make them so interesting. Woodworkers refer to a Live Edge when they have left the natural shape of the tree to decide the couture of a finished piece of work. The idea is that what has grown naturally is infinitely more varied, subtle and beautiful than what a woodworker would create in the shop. In much the same vein, many gemstones get their colors from chemical impurities that turn otherwise clear crystals into dazzling blues, greens or reds. … Great wine is much the same way. A wine that is perfectly consistent from the start of the bottle to the finish, or from day to day or year to year, can be pleasant, but never exciting. The fascination of an extraordinary wine is how it can change over time or based on what it is paired with, or even our moods or the time of day; how it can spark our imaginations and add joy to our lives.”
Almost eight years after that post, Boyce was lamenting the length of time they were awaiting approval.
“We’re in month 13 since we applied for the permit to build it, and yeah, it’s nuts, it’s just nuts,” Boyce said in mid-April. “I don’t know what to say about it. It’s horrendously expensive and takes forever, and just, kind of crazy, but we’re almost there, so we’ll get to build that. I think the actual construction, according to our contractor, should be nine or 10 months, so much quicker than the permitting process, and we’ll end up with a really cool new facility that, I think, people going to love to come visit,” he continued, then breaking into a laugh, “at I hope they will, with all the work we put in.”
Located about 35 minutes apart, Live Edge will be similar in size to Black Ankle, with similar long driveways that meander through the vines as they approach the tasting rooms. He said the building at Live Edge will have a “sweeping kind of roof to it,” inspired by the Baltimore Visitor Center and the Dezeen building in Ecuador, per a Facebook post.
Below the green roof will be a building with “big, big windows and big glass on the front. It’s going to be located right next to a stand of trees, and in those trees we’re going to build a series of walkways and platforms, so if you can imagine you walk straight out of the building, and you keep walking on a flat surface, but the land drops away quite quickly,” he explained. “The further you walk out, the higher you get, and we have platforms out there that are going to be 20, 25 feet up in the tree canopy, so you’re going to be able to go out and taste and drink wine and eat food out on these platforms up in the tree canopy and shaded by the leaves of the forest, so we think it’s going to be kind of unique and different, and you know, we’ve always struggled since day one. We underestimated at Black Ankle how much demand there was for outdoor shaded space. People want to come and be outside, but they don’t want to be in the sun, especially when it’s hot. So, it’s been a struggle for years and years and years to try to figure out how we get more shade for people, and so with this one we decided [to] use the shade we have, which is nature’s trees, and so it’s been a bit of a bear permitting this with the county. They love every tree, but so do we. So we want to keep all the trees. I think we’re going to be able to do it, and it’ll be kind of neat and different.”
Per an April Facebook post, the theme of the design will aim to bring the outside in: “Our chandelier, if you want to call it that, will be the roots of one of Live Edge trees which seems to grow through the ceiling of the tasting room. To top it all off, quite literally, our signature green roof will be on top so the whole building will almost blend right into the nature.”
Continuing, Boyce said that they should be able to seat more people outside on these platforms “than we can inside at the facility, and we’re OK than that.”
There will be open business hours, with no appointments.
“There’s some interesting trends going on in the industry, and we’ve talked a lot about them,” he said. “Our sense is we want to make great wine, but from there we want to be inclusive and not exclusive, if that makes sense. We’re also going to welcome families and children of all ages. That’s just our thing. Sarah and I have five kids. Mel has kids ... we like children. So there it is.”
Added Schulte, who was also on the call: “One of the things that I always love about, like, the idea of this, and welcoming people. We want you to have the experience here, like with great wine, that you want to have, as opposed to forcing an experience on you that we want you to have.”
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