When Kip Kumler left the business world for winemaking in 1997, he had no background in viniculture. “I didn’t have any preparation, I would say, for what I’m doing now,” he says. “I just became more and more interested in it and I read everything I could read and then I began traveling and talking to winemakers in California and around the Finger Lakes and then eventually in Burgundy and Germany and Alsace.”

By 1999, Kumler had secured a commercial license and founded Turtle Creek Winery in Lincoln, which now produces about 1,200 cases of wine annually; the vineyard is exactly the size he likes and prefers to remain. “I have no interest in expanding. If I try and be bigger than that, there’s financial pressure obviously, but I would end up managing people instead of treating this as a craft, which was the whole idea.” His wines are available in 40 area stores and 20 restaurants, including The Four Seasons, Ten Tables, and Il Casale in Belmont.