Last week, spring officially sprung at Old Westminster Winery. Across the rolling hillside, new leaves unfurled on row after row of chardonnay grapevines, while over at the barn-chic tasting room, a multitude of workers milled about—transforming the outdoor dining area’s signature greenhouses into open-air cabanas for warmer days ahead.
But even bigger changes are underway at the family-run winery in Carroll County, beloved by Baltimoreans and increasingly lauded for putting Maryland wine on the map.
Ten years ago this fall, siblings Drew Baker, Lisa Hinton, and Ashli Johnson opened their 17-acre vineyard to the public, welcoming guests with little more than a pole-barn built by their father, a few picnic tables for wine tastings, and a food truck in the parking lot—“a charming disaster,” quips Baker. But since the COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered or stunted much of the hospitality industry, they’ve only been growing, now with their 2020 addition of a seasonally inspired, pizza-slinging kitchen serving as many as 1,000 guests on busy weekends.
And this month, they are debuting several new additions, including a newly expanded kitchen that houses their woodfired pizza ovens, an adjacent new seating area to watch the culinary action, and most notably, a rising-star chef who aims to elevate Old Westminster into one of the Mid-Atlantic’s premiere destinations for not only wine, but food.
“The missing piece in our team was a really talented culinary partner,” says Baker, 37, “someone who understands and aligns with what we’re trying to achieve, to not only provide technical skill and passion, but also have skin in the game. . . . And without hesitation, our sommelier, Joey [Fox], was like, ‘You have to meet Tae Strain.’”
And there’s a chance you’ve already eaten one of Strain’s meals. The Seoul-born, Howard County-bred chef cut his chops in Baltimore, running the acclaimed Demi restaurant in Belvedere Square—for which we named him “Best New Chef” in 2011—before moving on to even more illustrious gigs, from sous chef at the Michelin-starred Public in New York City to chef de cuisine at the Michelin-starred Progress in San Francisco to executive chef at David Chang’s Momofuku in Washington, D.C.
Most recently, his Ggoma Supper Club pop-up explored his identity as a Korean-American adoptee at locations throughout the city, collaborating with other tastemakers like Ekiben, Foraged, Karma Farm, and JBGB’s. This series is also how he first teamed up with Old Westminster, and in many ways, the rest is history.
“It was just all green lights,” says Baker, who got a direct recommendation for Strain from Momofuku’s Chang, too. “Tae is really talented, but arguably more importantly, he’s also a good leader and a great human that people who work with him respect and appreciate, which is a core principle of how we’ve done life and business as sibling-partners up to this point.”
Strain will serve as culinary director at Old Westminster, and later this year, become the executive chef-partner of the family’s forthcoming Burnt Hill—a regenerative farm, farm-to-table restaurant, and visionary organic winery located on their 100-plus acres in Clarksburg, about an hour outside of Baltimore.
At the former, working alongside Johnson—who has overseen the Old Westminster food program since its inception—he plans to expand upon the existing menu, which changes seasonally and features a curated assortment of simple yet sophisticated dishes, including charcuterie, salads, small plates, and the fan-favorite wood-fired pizzas.
He also hopes to double down on the team’s commitment to using local and sustainable ingredients, such as vegetables from Good Dog Farm and Calvert’s Gift Farm; cheese from Firefly Farms and Caputo Brothers; and milk and butter from South Mountain Creamery—not to mention their own pastured pork and even firewood for the pizzas from Burnt Hill. By summer, they will even start stone-milling their own heirloom wheat to make the doughs. (Johnson also just completed an intensive cooking course at the Italian Culinary Institute outside of Sicily, skills from which she plans to incorporate into the rustic farm cuisine.)
“I don’t want to reinvent the wheel—what happens at Old Westminster is really beautiful,” says Strain, 41, who is currently dreaming of a spring pizza with green-garlic cream, ramp pesto, and fresh mozzarella for the next menu drop on May 1, as well as a vanilla tart with whipped crème fraîche, lemon-rhubarb preserves, and fresh strawberries.
“We’ll be building on what’s already here, taking what works well and being thoughtful in how we think about what’s next for it, making smart, fun, creative moves around the edges,” he says. “And if there’s something that I want to bring to this place beyond just dishes, it’s many years of experience and management in restaurants, trying to enrich the kitchen in that way.”
Already, his 12-person culinary team has more room for both ideas and implementation, thanks to recent renovations that transformed their ad-hoc pizza pavilion into a formal kitchen—more than doubling its square footage, adding a marble pass with glowing globe-shaped pendant lights, and featuring wide windows that provide guests with an open-kitchen view.
“The cooks are very happy,” says Strain. “Every week, there are small victories. And it’s really exciting, it’s kind of a visceral thing. At times, restaurants can be static, but it’s palpable to me, walking around now—you can really feel the changes and the energy it’s giving to the team.”
Meanwhile, just outside, the new “kitchen garden” seating area opens today—April 28—transforming an empty back-of-house lot into an “Italian al fresco dining vibe,” as Baker puts it, with blue-and-white bistro chairs, tasseled umbrellas, and concrete two-top tables surrounded by modern planters featuring fresh herbs, vegetables, and flowers, designed by his wife, Casey. It’s an opportunity to welcome more guests into their space, with reservations required and typically booked up at least one month in advance.
And of course, there will be wine, with pairings spearheaded by Fox, the sommelier, and Hinton, the resident winemaker. She just released two 2024 vintages: their bright and fruity Rosé, featuring grapes from Burnt Hill and Cool Ridge Vineyard in Washington County, and Honey, a multi-vineyard blend of Gruner Veltliner, Chardonnay, and Chardonel, slightly sweetened with wildflower honey from Apex Bee Company.
The rest of their whites will be bottled in the coming weeks, followed by their pét-nat sparkling wines. About 400 barrels of reds are currently aging in their storehouse, as well, including single varietals to be released with the opening of Burnt Hill this fall. These days, they make about 10,000 cases of wine per year.
“Old Westminster is in a really beautiful and mature place,” says Hinton, 35, noting the specific roles each sibling plays—with Johnson overseeing hospitality, Baker taking on farm duties, and herself handling wine (she has a background in chemistry). “It’s crazy to think, because we were completely different people when we started—none of us had our spouses, we didn’t have any kids, Drew hadn’t fought cancer, and we just really have gone through so much life since then. And it’s really amazing, that we’re so dialed in, and still very much in our strike zones.”
As she alludes, it’s been quite the feat for their family, getting to this moment. The winery itself was born out of the financial collapse of 2008, when their father, a homebuilder, lost his livelihood and was looking to sell their property on the rural outskirts of Westminster. Fresh out of college, the kids stepped in with a wild idea to quite literally save the farm—by starting a vineyard—planting their first 10,000 vines by hand in their childhood backyard in 2011.
Slowly but surely, they kept at it, increasing production, expanding distribution, and adding their official tasting room before the pandemic provided another course correction—one they now look back on as a blessing, as it precipitated their private dining and pushed them into the food scene.
And then, biggest of all, came Baker’s diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia in 2022. After two bone marrow transplants, daily chemo treatments, and countless nights at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the father-of-three is now in remission.
“If there’s anything I’m sure of, it’s that you never can predict what life will bring,” says Johnson, 34. “From the beginning of this first decade, when we were out to prove something, up to now, after Drew’s health journey, and all we’ve been through as a family, and how we’ve all grown up, so much of our mission is just celebrating life together and creating genuine moments of joy for people on our farm in the same way.”
For them, it seems that everything that’s come so far has led to this next chapter, with the addition of Strain and the launch of Burnt Hill.
“Looking back on the last 15 years, going back to when we really started,” says Baker, “I have such a sense of pride in where we are and where we’re going, because I always am reminded from whence we came.”