Our two founders, John Levenberg and Enrique Pallares, were united by an almost quixotic quest for quality. Along with their families, they gathered many evenings under the quiet skies of the Eastern Shore of Maryland to drink wine and dream up a winery that would breach the chasm between the rural and the urban, an unprecedented place that would truly reflect the potential of the soil and the people of our region.

Casa Carmen, more than a winery, is an afternoon under the sun. It is a voyage to the south of some distant place. It is an invitation and a proposal to view life not as it is, but as it should be! It is an elegy for a simpler world and an ode for the one to come. It is the confession of the dreamer. It is a grand gesture with a wooden sword. A long pause and a rapture. It is saffron, tobacco and plump clusters of grapes. It is an attempt at gathering earth, sky, divinities and mortals under one roof, in one glass, in one courtyard, between field stone, orange brick and green ivy.

Casa Carmen is a house, the dream of the Pallares family, a gypsy bunch that has settled on a gentle slope on the Brandywine Valley and in a little corner on the Maryland Eastern Shore to grow grapes and make wine and vermouth.

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