Meet the Norwoods

Nobody in our family ever said they were going to the vineyard. We said we were going to Grandma's house.

That's where we ran through the grapevines with our cousins. Where we had more cookouts, fish fries, and family reunions than anyone could count. With ten children, thirty-something grandchildren, and more great-grandchildren than we can keep up with, there was always somebody there.

Our grandfather, Wilbert Norwood, bought this land over 75 years ago. We don't know exactly what his vision was, but he surely had one, because he planted grapevines in the field. Our aunts tell us he was an entrepreneur at heart. He served in the Army, and he was savvy in his own way. Maybe not the way we think about business today, but entrepreneurial in spirit.

He and our grandmother, Sarah, raised ten children here. Our grandfather passed in the early 1980s, and Grandma lived to be 93. Their oldest son was our dad, Charles Norwood.

Dad grew up on this land and lived here as an adult too, right up until he passed. He was the kind of person everybody was drawn to. If he wasn't the life of the party, he was pulling up with his grill. He knew everybody. On Friday nights you could find him outside his garage with his music turned up and friends sitting around a barrel, drinking the wine he made himself.

We lost him in 2024, in his early sixties. That loss set something in motion for us.

We wanted to be closer to the place he called home. And we wanted to use what he left us to honor the place he loved most. So we went to the family with an idea: carve out a small part of the vineyard and share it with other families.

That's how Norwood Vineyard & Gardens began in early 2025.

Today the land is still owned by the heirs of Sarah Norwood: her living children and the grandchildren of the children who have passed. The family home is still there, and the family still gathers in it. Family members still do the pruning, the upkeep, and the planting, which, honestly, is not our gift. We're Alicia, Devin, and Erika, Charles Norwood's children, and we run the day-to-day business.

Almost everything we do comes from a memory. The jams and preserves we serve on our Sunday Pour & Tour are for Grandma Norwood, who made preserves from almost everything that grew here: figs, apples, the muscadines themselves. Our Friday night wine tastings feel a lot like our dad’s late night jam sessions outside his garage.

Along the way, we've learned a lot about our family, and about what's missing in ours and so many other families: the preserving of things, the passing down, the leaving room for the next generation to carry the torch, even if they carry it differently.

What surprises us most is that people aren't just inspired because we're a family with a vineyard. They're inspired because we're a family trying to keep something for the future generations.

To us, legacy isn't just who starts something or who it gets passed to. It's how each generation keeps giving it new life. This is our small way of doing just that.

We know we're a small part of a much longer story that started decades before we existed. Our hope is that generations from now, our family will still be enjoying this land and be proud of where they come from, whether they knew the people before them for decades, for a year, or never got to meet them at all.

Thanks, grandma and dad, for always inspiring us to put family first. Thank you to Aunt Tina, Aunt Cathy, and Uncle Harvey for supporting us in so many ways along this journey. And last but not least, thank you, to our first cousins - Brandi, Alishay, Jerome, Camille, Amanda, and Desmond - for always being willing to lend a hand, prayer and advice as we learn how to steward a shared legacy as a family together.

Alicia, Devin, and Erika