Countryside, Community, Celebration: Casa Carmen Wines
In a small Eastern Shore community like Chestertown, the Pallares brothers have caused quite a stir. In the 50’s, we would have called them “Continentals”—a vague term that covers their general air of cultivated sophistication, their slight but charming accents, and their genteel Ecuadorian otherness. In short, they’ve got buzz—due in large part to an exciting series of initiatives they’ve launched centering on wine, fun, and community. Along with their families and the help of some local friends, Enrique and Felipe created a small winery, Casa Carmen, and used it as the foundation to launch a wine club, farm dinners, and a downtown tasting-room-slash-tapas joint. Together, these wizards of bonhomie have conjured up all sorts of new opportunities for the good people of Chestertown to gather together over a bottle of wine and a plate of paella—working their community magic and paving the future for their young business along the way.
How do two former polo-playing Ecuadorians-by-way-of-Spain- Argentina-Florida-and-Sonoma make their way to Chestertown, tucked away in the arable countryside of Maryland’s Eastern Shore? Like the rest of their lives, it was in a slightly-roundabout fashion. Their sister, Macarena, was attending St. John’s College in Annapolis and on a visit, Enrique was charmed by the vibrant waterfront city. Day trips to the Eastern Shore led Enrique and wife Laura to Kent County, where the small towns and rural landscape evoked the spirit of the Ecuadorian countryside Enrique remembered from his childhood. They both immediately fell in love. Within a few weeks they began looking for a little place with some land outside Chestertown, hoping to put down roots and realize their dreams of starting a family. But the land would provide more than metaphorical roots—it’s where Enrique and Felipe planned to grow grapes, finally starting the winery business they’d talked about since they worked in the rolling vineyards of Sonoma, California.
Casa Carmen released their first wines in 2017, a white 100 percent Gruner Veltliner, a rosé blend of 60 percent merlot and 40 percent cabernet sauvignon, and a red blend of the same varietals. The community responded positively, with a thirst for more. Local wine sellers, like the Chester River Wine and Cheese Co., stocked their wine and supported the new business by hosting Casa Carmen pop-up events where the Pallares’ cooked up huge batches of paella to be served alongside glasses of their wine, like the Sunday evenings of their childhood. When the Pallares’ started a wine club for Casa Carmen in 2017, membership rapidly grew—buoyed by the club’s preferential access to Casa Carmen’s wines but also by their exclusive and much sought-after farm dinners. Here, the Pallares family continued to produce their own distinctive Casa Carmen blend: twenty percent excellent wine, forty percent camaraderie, and forty percent unforgettable food against a beautiful rural backdrop.
The evenings with the wine club and the paella pop-ups were so successful, and the community so supportive, the next step was natural— Casa Carmen needed its own tasting room. In June 2019, the doors to the Wine House in downtown Chestertown opened. “Our idea of a tasting room is a little different than most wineries,” Enrique Pallares said. “It really has to be a place where you can drink wine and eat really good food. We started making the tapas that we were making for ourselves—we’re kind of obsessed with the kitchen—we had this idea of bringing to Chestertown something like the Spanish or Latin American bodegas where after work you can go get your wine, eat a couple of plates of really delicious food and meet up with friends.”
The Wine House is indeed a house—a row house, on Cross Street, with a decidedly inviting and informal vibe. Whether it’s for a glass of wine and chatting with passerby on the front porch, an intimate and extended round of tapas and wine cocktails under the trees in the garden, or tucked up in the cozy bar with a bottle and some boquerones, every convivial option at the Wine House has the Pallares’ stamp on it—community, celebration, and through the food and wine, a connection to the countryside and a sense of place.
In 2016, Enrique and Laura found the perfect property in Broad Neck— 6.5 acres of farmland complete with a farmhouse and the ruins of the old county almshouse. For the two brothers, it was the perfect place to get their feet wet in the Maryland wine industry. Felipe had studied viticulture in California and Enrique had worked in the vineyards of Sonoma Valley for five years, pruning and maintaining the grapes. The interest in wine had started early—at the dining room table, where their wine aficionado parents had shared their passion (and occasionally, a taste or two from their glass) with their children. Travels to Argentina and Spain had expanded the Pallares’ brother’s palate. Once in Maryland, an excellent glass of wine from Black Ankle Winery in Mt. Airy, Maryland convinced Enrique that it was possible to marry this new place he fallen in love with to his and Felipe’s old dream of a winery.
Their timing was good. “It was an explosive time in the industry,” Enrique Pallares said. “After the Maryland Winery Modernization Act in 2010, wineries were opening everywhere throughout the state. It was a pioneering thing to do—wine making was still so new, but already wineries were producing good wines, which made it clear it was possible.”
But Enrique Pallares is quick to point out that the plan was never to have hundreds of acres of grapevines in Kent County. “The traditional chateau model of vineyards and wineries is really prohibitive,” he said. “Unless you’re inheriting a big farm, it’s an aristocratic dream that requires a huge capital injection. And it can be prohibitive, too, from a quality standpoint, especially in a place where growing grapes for wine is as new as it is in Maryland. People here are still figuring out what varietals are best in different locations around the state—and that is a long, trial-and-error process that can end up with subpar wine.”
To navigate this burgeoning market, and to produce the kinds of excellent wine the Pallares’ enjoyed themselves, they enlisted some top-notch support—John Levenburg, an award-winning winemaker. Levenburg, who had worked in wineries in California, France, and New Zealand, was well versed in the practical aspects of crafting great East Coast Wine, and worked closely with Enrique and Felipe to finely hone their varietals, sourcing and blends.
The brothers, joined by their sister Macarena and Enrique’s wife Laura, were ready to move the winery forward. They named their business Casa Carmen, a reference to the Hebrew meaning of the word as “fruitful garden” and also, “song”. It resonated with their family’s roots in farming and agriculture, but also with their celebratory, festive approach to life. “A farm surrounded by really good food and really good wine—that’s how we grew up,” Enrique Pallares said. “With wine and paella every Sunday, staying up until very late hours with the family, talking and dancing and singing. The name ‘Carmen’ really captures all of those things.”
The plan to produce excellent wine would need to be bigger than the acreage on Broad Neck, for a few reasons. The first was the neighbors. Almost immediately, the Pallares’ met opposition in their plan to start a winery on Broad Neck, from locals who distrusted the newcomers and disliked their wine-making plans. “It was a time of disillusionment for us,” Enrique Pallares said. “We had hardly started and now we weren’t sure we’d be able to make wine in Kent County. But the community at large really came out in support of us. So many friends and even people we didn’t know came out of nowhere to support us in any way they could—moral support, or in practical ways, offering places for people to taste our wine or for us, once we were ready, to try a pop-up.”
So Casa Carmen had to regroup. The Pallares’ established an acre of vines on Broad Neck, to get a sense of the climate and to maintain a boots-on-the-ground connection to how each year’s crop of grapes tasted and aged, but the bulk of their grapes would be grown in a 50-60 mile radius through close partnership with other Mid-Atlantic growers. The brothers were incredibly selective, ensuring that each aligned with the Pallares’ values, standards, and requirements. “Today, we visit our growers several times a year,” Enrique Pallares said. “And we’re willing to pay more a ton, if, for example, we ask a grower to drop a bunch of the fruit to create higher quality fruit. It reduces their yield, but we’ll pay the difference for a better product.” Eventually, they would tap into a network of several growers to source enough grapes for their new winery. Today they have partnerships with vineyards in Queen Anne’s County, Southern Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey, and Mt. Airy, Maryland.
Today, Casa Carmen is truly a collaborative family-run business, with the entire family and a few friends involved in Casa Carmen’s different ventures. Enrique acts as the executive and oversees wine production, Felipe is in charge of the vineyard partnerships and operation of the Wine House. Laura is the administrator and organizer, Macarena manages marketing, and mother Sylvia takes care of the Wine Club and its membership.
As it grows, the heart of Casa Carmen really lies in the friendship and connection between the two brothers, made fast over their love of wine and shared experiences. “In some ways, we’re the same person,” Enrique Pallares said. “There’s a lot of collaboration and crossover. We’ll have meetings at night on the farmhouse porch after work, listen to music with a glass of wine and talk about problems or decisions. That’s how we come up with ideas, too, and brainstorm menus.”
As Enrique Pallares looks ahead at the future of Casa Carmen— there has been some discussion about a wine collective—he thinks it is important that at its essence, his family’s business is about creating and sustaining enjoyment. “The top quality that a wine can have is drinkability. Wine should be drinkable and extremely pleasurable, and you should be able to have several glasses of it and want more,” Enrique Pallares said. “The wine that we strive to make is nuanced and complex. Like a good book, or a Leonard Cohen song, you can come back to it again and again, and every time you continue discovering things.”
Casa Carmen Wine House
312 Cannon Street, Chestertown, MD
443-203-8023, casacarmenwines.com
