Downtown McKinney is toasting a new tasting room.
4R Ranch Vineyards and Winery has opened a location at 110 E. Louisiana St., on the south side of McKinney Square.
The tasting room is an expansion of owners Walt and Nicole Roper’s Muenster-based, award-winning winery, which first planted cabernet and viognier grapes on three acres in 2010.
Since then, Walt, an “attorney by day,” and wife Nicole, who had a long career in retail in Dallas, have steadily grown the four-year-old business they own with other family members. The businesses roots actually stretch back to 1999, when they began to spend more time at the family’s ranch in Muenster and realized it could serve another purpose.
“We looked around, and realized we could grow grapes,” Walt Roper said.
Last February, the winery signed on a new winemaker, Anthony Mosley, who was previously senior winemaker at Caprock Winery/English-Newsom Cellars in Lubbock, winemaker at Landry Vineyards in Louisiana and winemaker at Homestead Winery in Denison.
The move to McKinney is a natural progression for 4R, the Ropers said. With wine club members that come from across North Texas, and especially from north Dallas, Plano and Frisco, the Ropers had eyed the area for some time.
They signed a lease in April of this year, but COVID-19 but a crimp in their debut.
Now, the 3,000-square-foot-plus tasting room is holding a soft opening, with hours Wednesdays–Saturdays, 12 to 8 p.m. and Sundays noon to 6 p.m. Its official opening is set for December 10.
With current restaurant and bar/winery capacity in flux due to COVID-19, the Ropers are not sure what the tasting room’s initial menu will include. They may make a switch to serving more food (think cheese trays) in order to operate as a restaurant, they said, and thus serve more patrons.
For the time being, the duo is just glad to put into place long-held plans to expand.
“McKinney seems like the best place for us to be,” Nicole Roper said.
