We Visited With These Local Wine Makers Yesterday And Sip, Sip, Hooray

The couple behind Anchor & Hope Wine, they have the ultimate “meet cute” story when it comes to how they ended up relocating to Rhode Island and setting up shop here.

While visiting family in nearby Massachusetts in 2018, they took their son out for a nighttime car ride, in an effort to get him to fall to sleep, ending up on Hope Street in Providence.

Well, they ended up falling in love (cue all the heart ❤️ emojis) with the city.

It’s A Family Affair: The Lovely Label On Their 2019 Chardonnay From Applegate Valley Features A Painting By Marissa’s Mom Who’s An Artist.

And here we are in 2021 with their having converted an industrial space over in Rumford that used to be a wire factory into a hub for creating some of the best tasting and best quality wines around — with a major focus on using eco-conscious materials and practices (screw top caps instead of corks, an emphasis on kegs and cans rather than bottles, and using lighter glass when they do bottle because it means a smaller carbon footprint ultimately) and keeping it affordable. The average price point of a bottle is around $17.

Along with my friend K.G., I visited with Marissa and James yesterday afternoon at their negociant winery (small family farms in California, Oregon, and Germany that they have teamed up with ship their wines to Rumford to be finished, in other words, aged and bottled or more likely, kegged and canned) and it was evident immediately that both of them are passionate about not only wine making, but also about embracing life in lil Rhody. This translates to collaborations with a number of other local businesses (for ex., they have a new chocolate at Aura’s Chocolate Bar in Cranston, part of the Sommelier Series there) and doing neat stuff like popping up at Water Fire (yes, it’s baaack) this summer.

We took their canned rosé on our Fort Adams picnic (via Premier Picnics) a few weeks ago and it was delish. Also, so many people messaged me about where they could get the cans. Yesterday we sampled some of their Chardonnay (see photo above) and their Grenache from Mendocino County, California and they were heavenly.

For the latest from them, you’ll want to follow them on IG @AnchorHopeWine.

As always, if you find yourself cheersing and following along on their Rhody adventures on Insta, please let them know you found out about them here via Patty J and PattyJ.com.

Photo Credits: All of the above images are courtesy of PattyJ.com.