Hopewell Winery is located in Summer Hill, Ill., just across the river from Louisiana, Mo., and the winery is opening a bar and restaurant in downtown Warrenton at 209 E Booneslick Road. 

Owner Jeremy Wombles said they hope to open the bar on Oct. 26 with plans to open the restaurant at a later date. 

“We hope to open on that weekend, that’s our target date right now, and it will just be the tasting bar area and we’ll have seating out on the patio,” said Wombles. 

The location in Warrenton may seem far from their winery across the river but Wombles said the downtown storefront was a perfect fit. 

“It was actually the building itself that was versatile that made it the right fit,” said Wombles. “It had exactly what we were looking for.”

Those qualities included the storefront’s location, in the middle of downtown Warrenton, where it will be open to heavier foot traffic and will sit on a heavily traveled road in town. 

The building also already had a kitchen with a hood and two separate bars installed that Wombles plans to use. 

The winery originally opened in Illinois in 2007, and offers a variety of sweet and dry wines, with an emphasis in fruit wines, according to Wombles. 

“We have semi-dry, semi-sweet fruit wines, we also have sweet wines, and one it’s really hard to decide what’s the most popular but I think probably one of the most popular wines we have on our list would be our cherry wine,” said Wombles. 

While the winery does not produce its own grapes or other fruits, Wombles said that every wine they offer is made in house, and they even produce wines for some other vineyards that lack the expertise or capacity to produce them on their own. 

“Everything we sell at Hopewell is actually our wine that we make,” said Wombles. 

In addition to their wine offerings, Hopewell plans to open as a restaurant offering seafood, artisan platters and pizzas. There have been some delays updating the kitchen, but Wombles said he plans to have that open by 2025 as well. 

“When you come in, your first experience is going to be at the tasting bar, and then from there the traffic will flow into the dining room,” said Wombles. 

Hopewell received approval from Warrenton’s Board of Aldermen for its site plan and a conditional use permit to operate a bar in the C-2 general commercial zoning downtown district. 

Hopewell has also secured its liquor license from the state of Missouri, meaning the only barriers to opening are the renovations to the building itself, which Wombles hopes to have completed by the end of the year.