What started as artwork has turned into a wine business for Nicole Heere.

She is planning to open Housewife Rebellion, a wine tasting room and art gallery, in Grapevine in late 2025. The business will move into an 1888 Victorian house, that once housed Homestead Winery, according to the website.

In a nutshell

Heere has been an artist since 2010 and in 2014, she introduced housewife paintings. The work focused on the lighthearted protest of the daily life of a mother and wife, she said. She started showing the work in galleries and art fairs around the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

“I’ve been wanting to go beyond that; I felt like they needed a product,” she said of her artwork. “I have different collections of paintings and I felt these housewives would make a really good wine brand.”


In her own words

Heere said when she was looking into showcasing her art, she didn’t want to use her name because it wasn’t as cool as artists like Banksy or Mr. Brainwash. So, she chose the Housewife Rebellion.

“If you look at the artwork, this particular collection, they're all housewives from the past, but they are not your happy, go-lucky, perfect mom or perfect grandma-types,” Heere said. “They're setting laundry on fire. They are drinking wine instead of vacuuming. They are destroying their husband's things and stuff like that. So it's a housewife ... and she's in a rebellion and a lot of the rebellion is done at home when Dad's at work and the kids are at school.”

What happened


Competing in the Sachse Art Fair in 2022, she said she went to Office Max and had labels with her artwork printed off and she stuck them on wine bottles for the show.

The artwork drew interest, many asking to try to wine, which she said she was not able to do without a liquor license. She had to tell many of the guests it wasn’t really a wine company, but rather artwork.

The artwork was enough to make sales, she said. It even caught the attention of Lynda Carter, known for her role as Wonder Woman, who shared a post about the artwork on her social media page.

“I felt like I’m getting some momentum, so after the art fair I spent the next two years figuring out this wine industry and who I wanted to work with,” she said.


How we got here

With family from the Fredericksburg area, she had some knowledge of wine. She did research and ultimately found two winemakers to work with, one in Kerrville and the other in Lubbock.

That came after the research portion, which included inviting fellow mothers of her then-kindergarten daughter's class to sample the wine.

“I invited the kindergarten moms to my house and was like, ‘You guys are my target demographic, what should become Housewife Rebellion wine?’” she said.


In April 2024, she officially launched the wine label and competed in GrapeFest for the first time last September. Her newly launched venture took home a pair of third-place finishes with a Pinot Grigio and Rebel Rosé.

During the 39th Annual GrapeFest, held Sept. 11-14, Housewife Rebellion took home a pair of first-place finishes with the same two wines.

She said Housewife Rebellion hasn’t been in a lot of contests simply because it has been hard to get a spot due to the newness.

“But, when we get in a wine festival, we blow it out of the park," Heere said.


Current situation

With the success of the wine, she started looking for a place to open a brick-and-mortar location. She said McKinney was the first town picked, but the first spot didn’t work due to renovations needed to meet city code. She found another location in McKinney, but the sale fell through.

She turned her attention to Grapevine and called the decision a "no-brainer." Heere said Housewife Rebellion will be added to the Urban Wine Trail once it opens.

Renovations are still underway for the house, which has sat empty since 2020. She said some of the work is to repair damage from a fire.

Stay tuned

She said she is working on her first batch of wine that will be created with a mom-approved taste test: a sparkling moscato.

“We let the consumer talk to us and tell us what they would like,” Heere said. “Doing that, I have really figured out my target demographic’s palette somewhat."