M Cellars

M Cellars is what happens when someone rebuilds a career around a single conviction. Matt Meineke spent more than a dozen years as a Volkswagen technician (the other VW) before a bottle of homemade wine, a gift from a tool rep, sent him to winemaking in his basement. In 2007 he and Tara bought a Concord vineyard on South River Road, pulled the vines out, and planted European varieties in their place. The winery opened in 2012.

The conviction was that the Grand River Valley could grow serious vinifera, and the estate has spent a decade proving it. Around thirty acres, with another twenty-five farmed nearby, carry Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc, Grüner Veltliner and Pinot Gris, plus two grapes almost nobody else in Ohio grows: Rkatsiteli and Saperavi, old Georgian varieties that turn out to love this climate. Nearly everything on the list is estate grown, and the wines are bottled on site.

The traditional-method sparkling wines are the quiet stars. Along with the Pinot Noir and the Meritage, they are the bottles the tasting room runs out of first.

The room itself is the most modern in the valley: bright and contemporary, a deliberate contrast to the barn-and-beam style of its neighbors, with a terrace over the vines. Matt has said his goal is a winery for wine lovers that never feels pretentious, and it lands exactly there.

Pair it with the Harpersfield Covered Bridge, a few minutes down the same river road. Walk the span, photograph the river, and be sitting down with a glass fifteen minutes later.