Pur Noire Urban Winery Will Open in Downtown Houston Summer 2021 | Eater Houston

"A brand-new Black-owned urban winery and tasting room opening by early summer at 802 Milam in Downtown Houston, founded by married couple Carissa and Kenneth Stephens after a 2015 trip to Italy inspired them with the communal, everyday culture of wine. They partnered with Napa vintners to craft an initial four-wine lineup (with three more styles planned) and successfully sold a red blend direct-to-consumer during the pandemic. The space will feature vats, barrel storage and a tasting room for custom-blended wines and hands-on wine education aimed at people who know little about wine as well as more experienced drinkers; the wines are intentionally balanced—not super sweet or overly tannic—to be broadly approachable. A California winemaker with multiple 90-plus-point pinot noirs has been hired and will be relocated to Houston to guide production, allowing the owners to avoid Napa production and shipping costs and price all tasting-room wines at $25 or less. The project is explicitly intended to make fine wine more accessible to a demographic often overlooked by the U.S. wine industry and to demonstrate that African American wine makers and consumers are a viable market in a field where fewer than 1% of winemakers are African American." - Brittanie Shey