Renault Winery

The story begins with Louis Nicholas Renault, born into the champagne country of France, who came to America in the mid-nineteenth century intent on making sparkling wine. After early ventures elsewhere, he settled in 1864 on land near the newly founded town of Egg Harbor City, where German immigrants were already experimenting with grapes in the sandy soil. Renault planted his own vines and built a winery, and the estate grew into one of the largest and best-known in the East.

This part of New Jersey lies within the ancestral homeland of the Lenape people, whose descendants remain part of the state today, and whose long presence shaped the land the German settlers and French vintners later farmed. Egg Harbor City itself was founded in the 1850s as a German-American colony, and viticulture became one of its signature trades, with Renault its most famous name.

When Prohibition shut down most American wineries in 1920, Renault found a way to survive, producing a fortified tonic sold through pharmacies as a medicinal product, which kept the vines and the business alive through the dry years. When legal winemaking returned, Renault was still standing, one of the few American wineries never to close, which is the root of its claim as one of the oldest continuously operating in the country.

In the decades since, the estate has passed through several owners and been expanded, restored, and reimagined more than once, adding a hotel, golf, dining, and event spaces to the original winery. Through all the changes, wine has continued to be made from the vineyards, and the sense of a very old place carried forward remains its heart.

Renault is famous for a treasure most winery visitors do not expect: a collection of rare antique glassware, wine glasses, decanters, and vessels gathered over generations and displayed on the estate. In a region with its own deep history of glassmaking, the collection ties the winery to the wider craft heritage of South Jersey.

The wine itself has long leaned toward the sweet and the sparkling, in keeping with Renault's founding ambition to make champagne-style wine, and later to the fruit-forward blends that made it a popular name. The vineyards grow grapes suited to the sandy, well-drained soil, and a visit built around a tasting is the classic way to experience the place, glass in hand, with the vines and pines beyond the windows.

The winery sits right where the farmland gives way to the Pine Barrens, and that setting is part of its story. The sandy, acidic soils that make the Barrens such an unusual ecosystem also drain well and warm quickly, conditions that grapes can thrive in when the right varieties are chosen. Renault's success helped prove that South Jersey could grow wine, a lesson the region's newer wineries have since built on.

Around the vineyards, the pine-and-oak forest of the Barrens presses close, home to deer, wild turkey, songbirds, and the distinctive plant life of the sandy soils. The mix of cultivated vineyard and wild pine forest gives the estate a peaceful, rural character that feels a world away from the boardwalks of Atlantic City just down the road.

Spring brings the vineyards back to life, the vines leafing out and the estate reopening fully after winter, a fresh and quiet time to visit before the busy months.

Summer is warm and green, with long evenings on the grounds, garden events, and the vines heavy with growing fruit. It is a popular season for weddings, so the estate can be lively.

Fall is the winery's signature season. The harvest comes in, the air fills with the smell of crushed grapes, and the surrounding pines and hardwoods color the edges of the vineyard. It is the best time to feel the place as a working farm.

Winter is the quiet season, the vines bare and pruned, the estate turned to indoor tastings and cozy visits. It is a peaceful, low-key time to sample the wines by the fire before the year begins again.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.