Turks Head Wines in West Chester has traded its cheese-and-charcuterie tasting room for a full-service restaurant, now plating three- and four-course prix fixe dinners built around the winery’s own California-made bottles. The shift turns a once-simple pairing spot at 120 N. Church St. into something closer to a destination restaurant, with chef Dave McDonald designing seasonal menus meant to showcase the wines rather than the other way around.
Founder Allison Owen opened the tasting room in 2024, two years after she walked away from a two-decade career in human capital management and cloud software consulting to chase a different kind of life. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Owen, 47, left her corporate job in 2022 “longing to enter the wine world,” and the business has steadily grown from there. Her aim was to give Chester County wine lovers a Napa-style experience without the cross-country flight.
That Napa connection is literal, not just aesthetic. All of Turks Head’s wine is produced and bottled in California and shipped east in refrigerated trucks, the Inquirer reports, an arrangement made possible by Owen holding both a Pennsylvania limited winery license and a California wine manufacturing license. The winery’s fruit comes from Northern California vineyards, with PennLive putting the number at 14 across regions including Napa Valley, Lake County, Sonoma Mountain, Alexander Valley, and Russian River Valley.
From Charcuterie Boards to a Real Kitchen
When Turks Head Wines first opened, the tasting room kept things simple, serving only cheese and charcuterie alongside a rotating portfolio of more than 30 wines, per the Inquirer. But guests kept asking for more substantial food, and Owen eventually installed a kitchen hood and brought on McDonald, a chef with previous stints at Laurel Creek Country Club in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, and Helm BYOB in Philadelphia…