NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. (FOX 56) — You may have heard this before, but if you haven’t, Kentucky is the “Bourbon Capital of the World.”
But did you know Nicholasville can technically also be called the “Wine Capital of the United States?”
This is a story that starts back in 1799 when Swiss immigrant and vinedresser John James Dufour established the First Vineyard, the United States’ first commercial winery.
Fast forward almost 230 years, and there are plenty of stories to tell.
Read more of the latest Lexington & central Kentucky news
“In 1803, the members of the Vineyard Society met at Postlethwaite’s Tavern in Lexington, and they drank the first wine from the vineyard,” Bobbye Carpenter said.
Despite early success, Carpenter, who is a partner of the winery’s owner, Tom Beall, describes a dark period for the vineyard when Dufour went to Indiana and his brothers took over the businesses but experienced failure.
“We had one of our false starts and then a chill, you know, a freeze for several days, and they lost pretty much the crop,” Carpenter detailed.
The property changed owners several times over the years.
In 1994, Beall and Carpenter bought the land, and in 2002, everything changed.
“A good friend of Tommy’s who is a wine connoisseur, Don Graham, was up in Bloomington, Indiana, and he was at the Butler Winery,” Carpenter detailed. “They could not place the six acres that was the vineyard on the rest of the 730 that had been sold. So, he brought the book back to us, and it took Tommy four years to do the research to prove conclusively exactly where the vineyard had been.”
LATEST KENTUCKY NEWS:
Over the last two decades, Beall and Carpenter worked to restore the property and get it registered as a historic landmark so it would never be lost again.
Now the vineyard is open to the public, where they make and sell 13 different types of wine.
“There are so many nice people, and when you sit and listen to them, I mean, everybody seems like they start talking and they have something in common somewhere,” Carpenter said.
Beall and Turner said that while they love the winery and the people they’ve gotten to meet as a result of operating it, they want to make sure it lasts for generations to come and are trying to find a buyer who would keep the tradition alive.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 56 News.