Maryland’s First Winery to have a Licensed Outdoor Restaurant
Old Westminster Winery is officially Maryland’s first winery to have a licensed outdoor restaurant at our farm!
The Backstory
A year ago, we transitioned from celebrating the onset of spring to a stark and sudden need for social distancing, empty buildings and farming through a pandemic.
Our heartbeat has always been to create wines and experiences that connect people with our farm. Suddenly our parking lot was empty, the tasting room was closed, and all activities were postponed indefinitely. We had to completely change the way we interacted with our customers, absorb the shock, feel disappointment, and then get up, put on our face masks, and figure out our new reality.
How did we change and adapt? One way was by launching a new outdoor wood-fired restaurant on the farm called Eat Pizza Together!
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Eat Pizza Together is a dining experience bringing together the bounty and tastes of Maryland to those around your table. We’re showcasing more than a dozen local farms and sourcing carefully grown produce, crafted cheeses & meats to be savored atop a handmade pizza crust cooked in a seasoned brick oven.
We got started with nothing more than two brick ovens (purchased from a Baltimore-based restaurant that did not survive the pandemic), a James Beard nominated Chef (recently unemployed by the pandemic) and a vision for the future. All of our ingredients are sourced from the Mid-Atlantic’s finest farms and our oven is fueled by local oak, hickory and cherrywood.
This project is about so much more than simple food with a compelling story – it’s a mission to support farmers, provide good jobs and nourish our community. We're achieving this by offering a deeper food and wine experience rooted in local agriculture that is totally delicious and approachable! We welcome guests to make a reservation, show up and let us take them on a food and wine experience that is fun and uniquely Maryland.
We’re supporting farmers
When we talk about supporting local farms, it’s not in the token way that so many fake farm to table restaurants do. We put our money where our mouth is. In our first four months of business, we purchased $48,648.00 of raw ingredients (flour, produce, cheese, cured meats, honey, sunflower oil, etc.) directly from more than a dozen farms within 100 miles of our oven. Shepherds Manor Creamery in New Windsor – Maryland’s first and only sheep-milking dairy farm – hand delivers us an average of 80 pounds of cheese per week! This is a particularly rewarding relationship because our entire team spent a day at Shepherds Manor Creamery participating in the lambing process and now we're making pizzas with cheese made from the sheep we cared for the very next weekend!
We source pepperonis, cured meats, and sausages from Meat Crafters in Landover, Maryland. They provide high quality meats that are locally sourced and produced in small batches. We even brought them four of our own pigs that we raised at Burnt Hill Farm to be processed into fuet, cacciatore, truffle and porcini salamis that are on our menu every weekend!
We source small lots of stoneground flour from Migrash Farm in Randallstown, Maryland to make our amazing dough. Migrash grows grains organically in the Chesapeake Bay region and stone grinds at low temperatures to preserve the nutrition, tastes, and artisanal culture that nature intended.
We source high quality, sustainably grown veggies, fruit and other farm products directly from Chesapeake Farm to Table, a farmer-owned, farmer-managed collective of small farms in the Chesapeake region.
We’re creating jobs
We hired 13 new employees in September of 2020 to support the launch of Eat Pizza Together. In the most challenging and unpredictable year, we worked day and night to provide good jobs for a growing team of people ready to pour their passion into this burgeoning food program.
2020 was a wild ride and our hearts are filled with a deep sense of gratitude for everyone who supports us through the good times and tough times.
What does all of this mean for your next visit to our tasting room?
Well, we’re still serving the same great Maryland-grown wines that we’re known for and now we’re also dishing out a full menu of amazing pizzas and other wood-fire fare to pair with it! Chef and his team are bringing together the bounty and flavors of Maryland to those around your table.
As we transition to an outdoor restaurant-style service model, there’s no need to stop at the grocery store on the way to stuff your cooler full of snacks – we’ve got everything covered! Just make a reservation on our website and leave the rest to us! You can trust that the wine and food will be delicious and that you’re supporting local farms and businesses from top to bottom.
This is a new chapter in our story. We hope you will journey with us. Come with those you love to enjoy a glass of wine and pizza that are representative of a place, an ethos and the passionate people who inspire it.
