“Micro winery” coming to Cooper Center

The Richmond Highway area is set to get its first “micro winery” later this summer.

Dominion Press Winery will be opening its first location next to Thai Nakorn in the Cooper Center at 8733 Cooper Road (see map). The winery is owned by Andrew Rosado and Bonnie Evangelista, a husband-and-wife team with a passion for making wine.

The wine will be made in-house, primarily with grapes from the west coast. Because of Virginia ABC laws, they will not be able to serve wine by the glass in the store, except for at free tastings.

Rosado said that a variety of different wines will be made at the winery, including a fruit wines that Rosado said will be different than what’s found at many farm wineries in Virginia.

“It’s one of the reasons we decided to try this out,” Rosado said of the couple’s choice to not use Virginia grapes like the farm wineries that have sprung up around Virginia in the past few years. “We kind of wanted to go a different way.”

The couple, who lives in the Springfield area, picked the Cooper Road location because of its proximity to the highway and areas like Mount Vernon and Fort Belvoir. Being next door to a popular restaurant, and near the Family Bakery and Mrs. Doughnut a few doors down, was also a plus, Evangelista said.

Right now the couple is working on the interior of the store, securing their licenses and aiming for a late-summer opening. Once the location is ready, the Evangelista and Rosado say the look forward to winning over customers by offering wines for every taste, and a level of winemaking that will keep people coming back.

“[We’ll have] more variety than you would find in a farm winery,” Evangelista said. “I think people will be surprised with the variety they’re going to find in the store, and the quality of the wine.”

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