Chamber Insider Blog

Thank you to Cork & Keg Tours for sharing your story with us. Congratulations on being a finalist for the 30th Annual Loudoun Small Business Awards! View all finalists here and event info here.

Tell us the story of your business/nonprofit and how it’s evolved.

Cork and Keg Tours was founded in 2016 by Renee and Donald Ventrice. Their passion for wine and craft beer led them to create Loudoun County’s first-ever locally-based customizable luxury wine tour company. From our initial meeting with the Ventrice family, we were inspired by their enthusiasm for our local business community. As proud veterans and seasoned business owners, they built Cork and Keg Tours on the backs of strong relationships with hundreds of local businesses, and an unparalleled reputation of 5-star service.

In December 2023, Nich and I acquired Cork and Keg Tours from Renee and Don Ventrice. Shortly after, we acquired DiVine Wine Tours, a Fairfax-based wine tour company focusing on corporate and educational wine tours for over a decade. Since then, we both left our corporate jobs to spend 100% of our time building our business and our family together. We are fortunate to be a part of an incredibly supportive professional community, and we are proud to be business owners here.

This year we were flooded with interest in Northern Virginia wine and brewery tours, so looking to the future, we are focusing on expanding our fleet and our team to help even more people to discover the award-winning craft beverages, beautiful scenery, and wonderful people that call Loudoun County home.

What are you most proud of when it comes to your team?

We are incredibly proud to say 100% of our employees were inherited from the businesses we acquired, and we couldn’t have hand-picked a better team ourselves.

Our Experience Manager has decades of local knowledge of vineyards and breweries and teaches the class for Certified Tourism Ambassadors for Loudoun County. She brings all of this experience to the table while helping guests plan their perfect unforgettable experience.

Our Tour Concierges are also embedded in the local tourism community, working their full-time jobs at local vineyards, schools, and firehouses. Each of our Tour Concierges showcases their own unique and special qualities when engaging with the guests and problem-solving on tours, and we are also incredibly proud to say that we have received 100% 5-star reviews from our guests on their performance this year.

In what ways do you give back to the Loudoun community?

Julissa volunteers her time to Girls on the Run – NOVA. She is proud to serve an organization that instills confidence through running and teamwork. Through the philanthropic committee, Cork & Keg has donated to various non-profit organizations including SafeSpot and Scouts of America. We also try to directly contribute to a local Winchester boys youth sports team (Go Stonewall Ball Club!).

What would it mean to you and your business to win a Small Business Award? 

Winning a Small Business Award would be a true honor and a meaningful milestone for Cork and Keg Tours.

Since 2016, we’ve been dedicated to providing an exceptional experience for each guest while strengthening relationships within the Loudoun County community. This recognition would celebrate our commitment to hospitality, showcase the lasting partnerships we’ve built with local wineries, breweries, and small businesses, and underscore the value we place on creating memorable experiences. It would affirm the hard work we put into making every tour special, and it would inspire us to keep innovating and giving back to the community that has supported us every step of the way.

Who is the one person that has influenced you the most in your career? 

This is a tough choice because we are both surrounded by many wonderful mentors and colleagues but in the end the people that have influenced our careers the most would have to be each other.

As a young married couple navigating our careers, we always entrusted each other with tough choices and compromises to move forward together as a family. Later, after welcoming our first son we again looked inward and decided what direction we wanted our family and our careers to go making the difficult decision to start looking for a business to own and operate together as a family leaving behind our successful careers. We are firm believers in choosing your significant other not just as your partner in life but in all aspects of life.

What did you want to be when you grew up as a child?

Nich had aspirations of being a secret agent after watching one too many James Bond movies, and thankfully his mother talked him down from this risky career choice. Julissa always dreamed of being a mom and is happy to report that she is right on track.

If you’re not in the office, where can we find you/what is another passion you have?

Nich is a dedicated father who spends all of his free time (when he isn’t planning tours) with his two-year-old son diving into little Peter’s newest hobby. Julissa is diving into volunteer work with Girls On The Run – NOVA where she spends two days a week working with girls who are training for a 5K and teaching them about confidence.

How do you see your business evolving in the next 5 years?

It is impossible to predict how much the business will evolve in 5 long years, especially considering this is just our first year at the helm. So for now, we are just focusing on providing the absolute highest quality wine tours, with world-class hospitality, for as many guests as we can.

Loudoun County’s craft beverage industry is poised to take off to the next level – gaining increasing national and international acclaim every year, and we are happy to be a conduit through which visitors from all over the world can come to experience everything this community has to offer for themselves.

Learn more about Cork & Keg Tours on their website!