We are proud to announce we opened Boxwood Winery's newest
Tasting Room Wine Bar at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland this week. Our new location is home to soaringly magnificent views of the water, colorful sunsets, 40 wines for tasting on Enomatic tap, and indoor and outdoor seating for 100 people.
Our largest Tasting Room Wine Bar of DC yet: The National Harbor location represents more than a year in the life of The Tasting Room management group's efforts to open a stunning fourth location, every inch an astetic jewel; twinkling with blue-skied views from the patio and the polished steel of five wine-tasting Enomatic machines.
Our location is the first you see upon entering the National Harbor property, once you look away from the broad water views. We have been pleased to host hundreds of visitors this week to introduce The Tasting Room at National Harbor to local residents and professionals as well as our own friends and family members.
As you can see below, the new Tasting Room Wine Bar at National Harbor has enjoyed immediate buzz and popularity day and night for parties and regular business and we are thrilled with the immediate and over-whelmingly positive response to our newest jewel.
But before all that, there was the agonizing development of this new location and business. In signiature style, we were led through the painstaking steps of building this new Tasting Room by our hands-on founder and mentor, John Kent Cooke (below). From him we have learned all we know about getting our hands dirty in the work and doing all jobs as they need done. As a team, we are well-oiled in the process, but moreover, we like one another. The quality of our leadership shows in the National Harbor product. But you will need to see it in person to know truly what this means.
As I went back through the photo files, the clarity of the vision that moved this project forward with tireless and at times, fearless, energy leaps from the images.
The Tasting Room at National Harbor took shape in the imagination of John Cooke and his son and managing Vice-President, Sean Martin. Their expectation for the end was a perfect form in black, granite, and steel. But, the reality of getting from vision to brick and mortar involves as much steel in the gut as it does in the build-out. Challenges present themselves day after day. Lesser business-builders might be swayed but determination is in our trickle-down water supply. Patience and dedication saw us here.
On the day this hard-hat photo was taken it might have seemed we were a long way off, in reality we were in the last four months of the undertaking.
There it is on paper, early on. The three-dimensional fact that is now The Tasting Room Wine Bar of National Harbor was then a seemingly endless document of custom-builds and measurements, comprehensively beyond all but those who would build it and our experienced leadership, who have poured over a few plans in their day.
This is the National Harbor Tasting Room as we first knew it: No patio. No windows. No steel. The task ahead on that day tested us, pushed us, and made us better. I think you see from then to now, how very far this endeavor has come. What we know about creation has grown alongside it.
Here it was as a rendering; something more than a great dream but far from reality. Now that all the aesthetic and tactile beauty of The Tasting Room Wine Bar at National Harbor is understood, it is safe to advise you that all the renderings and plans - and even now, all the photographs - in no way gave away the true beauty of this location inside and out.
You will want to see it for yourself.
The Tasting Room Wine Bar at National Harbor, 137 Waterfront Street, Oxon Hill, Maryland is open for business.
