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Small plates, big shelves
Some wine stores exceed the ideal of a jug and a loaf by serving viands with their vintages.
By Chris Sherman
Published June 27, 2007
If wine goes with food on the dinner table, then why not serve food in the wine store?
Wine sellers who long bragged that wine goes with food now prove their point by dishing up solid food, from small plates to full dinners, to eat in their retail stores with the wine they sell.
At wine stores around Tampa Bay, you can now taste, buy wine to take home or to drink on premises by the bottle or the glass and have it with more than cheese and fruit. Have a robust syrah or sparkling rose with a pita pizza, turkey panini, hummus and chips or small plates of mini lamb chops and an apple pie. Or even a venison dinner.
At least a half dozen eat-in wine stores have popped up from Crystal River to Tampa in the past few years, fusing wine sales with the new tapas and small plate format. Some wine bars keep a small inventory of 50 labels. Others are traditional stores with hundreds of bottles on racks and racks and stacks and stacks for normal retail display and distinctive dining decor.
It's another way new-generation merchants are reinventing the wine store to attract the youngest and newest segments of the booming wine market.
You can taste wine by the ounces shooting from sleek chrome wine dispensers (which also tote up each drop on an account) at Tastings in St. Petersburg. Or try Grapes by the Bunch, a wine sampler with witty descriptors and bottle prices for each 2.5-ounce glass at the Grape, an Atlanta wine bar/retail chain with locations in Tampa and Sarasota.
All these devices aim to make wine more understandable and buying less mysterious, but a funny thing happened on the way to wine education: People are having a good time.
"I tell the musicians to tone it down for the first couple sets, " says John Lewis, the jovial chef who presides over wine-furled La Maison Gourmet in Dunedin. "After the first two they kick it up. We get a lot of people on the dance floor."
Kick it up? Dancing in a wine bar? Mais oui. Injecting new ideas into wine retailing is changing other parts of the wine world.
The wine bar/retail stores are not gentlemen's salons for hushed sniffing about vintages, but unstuffy parts of modern nightlife, girlfriendly and date-worthy.
And they also knock down the massive mark-ups of 200 percent or 300 percent that restaurants traditionally charge, if only because customers can see the retail price on the shelf a few feet from their table. If it's $10 retail, they won't pay $30 to have it with a pizza. And most wine merchants offer better, more unusual wines for the buck.
"I want them to be able to have the same experience and price as if they bought it and took it home, " says Jim Sirna of West Palm Wines. He has converted some of his Ybor City warehouse to Beaune's, serving food from chorizo to duckling.
With modest mark-ups and corkage fees (or none), more customers will open bottles in the store, sit a spell and have a bite to eat.
That's an easy way to make wine buying - and selling - easier: good food, live music and lower prices.
Chris Sherman can be reached at (727) 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com.
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More than cheese
Wine and food go so well together that several wine shops in the bay area now serve plates - both small and large. Here's a sampling:
- A Taste for Wine, 241 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, 727 895-1623.
The wrought iron balcony is reminiscent of New Orleans, although the street below is St. Petersburg's Central Avenue. Yet it's a historic site: On a lucky day in 1995, Rochelle Lewis and Erin Shim could see a wine bar future.
They pioneered the fusion of wine bar savvy and coffeehouse comfy. Today, regulars have twice the space, tables for office entertaining, easy chairs and sunny tables on that breezy balcony.
The music is jazzy and bluesy, the talk endless and the wine choices are smart from a long-time pro. Some nights see an organized tasting. If not, old hands and newcomers may chip in to syndicate a classy Rioja and trade notes.
Menu: Mini pizzas and snacks, $6 to $10.25.
Wine list: 300 wines by the bottle, 22 wines by the glass, $5 to $16. Pricing: Bottles for on-premises sipping are retail plus $5 corkage.
- Crystal River Wine and Cheese, 734 SE U.S. 19, Crystal River; (352) 795-0008.
After visiting hundreds of wine shops and restaurants to pitch wines on the wholesale level, Rodney and Jennifer Carr wanted to start something different.
So they chose an under-served town and gave it a great independent wine store and its first New American restaurant all in one.
In one half, chefs knock out daily menus with paninis and wraps to salads with Lecanto goat cheese to veal chop dinners. In the other, wines are racked floor to ceiling.
You can dine among the shelves or at more conventional tables, and drink any bottle in the store.
Menu: Lunch, $7 to $10; dinners, $17 to $33.
Wine list: 600 to 800 labels by the bottle, plus microbrews; 30 wines by the glass. Pricing: By the glass, 6-ounce pour is $4.50 to $9. By the bottle, retail price plus $5 corkage to drink on the premises.
- The Grape, International Plaza, Tampa; (813) 354-9463.
Tampa Bay's busiest after-dark mall now includes this wine bar and store, where fun sprawls from a retail area into a bar, two dining rooms, past a combo and out to a sleek patio. The Grape is only 6 months old, but owner Pam Cozene is a veteran of the wine business with 16 years at Gallo.
The bar is encouraging, not intimidating, to wine novices, with a 10-point style scale, sample trios of half-glasses, lightweight three-sum carriers instead of cases, and all 138 bottles available to taste with snacks or take home.
The learning is easy (a sip of vintage Champagne easily beats a sip of blanc de blanc) and the setting is stylish (green and purple, natch). "We're a great 'girls night out', " says Cozene, who plans four more Grapes around Tampa Bay.
Menu: Pita pizzas, salads, beef bourguignon and other bistro entrees, and dessert, $7 to $15.
Wine list: 138 labels by half-glass, glass and bottle. Pricing: By the glass, $7 to $20. By the bottle $10 to $100 retail; on premise markup ranges from none to double.
- La Maison Gourmet, 471 Main St., Dunedin; (727) 736-3070.
Downtown Dunedin is alive with food, music and outdoor crowds. Its 120-seat wine bar is too, and, although martini-free, it is full-house fun on weekends. After 10 years as a cookware store, cooking school and chef's arena, John Lewis' Maison has found its identity as a nightclubby wine bar.
Food is fresh and small-plate smart, wines are lusty and bright, long on zins and syrahs and global whites, all at good-value pricing for any-night dining.
Lewis dropped wine recommendations from the menu as intimidating and fussy. But if you ask, he'll tout a kabinett with the sausage-kraut balls, yet he's prouder to have the new Dog House wines for pet lovers on the patio. "People like going out with their dogs."
Menu: Small plates of cheese, lobster bisque, sea scallops, pork empanadas, cilantro croquettes and entrees of lamb, beef and seafood. Small plates, $6 to $12, full plates, $15 to $17.
Wine list: Fifty to 60 labels, all by glass or bottle. Pricing: By the glass, $5 to $12, by the bottle $19 to $95; takeout prices reduced.
- Beaune's, West Palm Wines, 2009 N 22nd St., Tampa; (813) 241-8587.
This dusty old gold Ybor City warehouse is a most industrial wine store, with exposed brick, endless racks, private cellar space and tasting tables. And now it hides a very clubby high-end wine bar.
At a bar of polished wine crates, in leather armchairs and at black-draped tables, wooden platters are piled with rare cheeses and sturdy charcuterie meats and glasses filled with finer wines.
Wines by the glass are smart, but bottles are smarter. A quick pick list includes sparkling and Rhones in every price range - $20, under $50, under $100 and Old & Rare - plus good Burgundy and Bordeaux back to '95 in the last two categories. Or pick any on the shelves, for a minimum of $20.
Food has the same pedigree: fourme d'Ambert, old Gouda and two dozen more cheeses, ; nine salamis; prosciutto and pate, or entrees of shrimp and venison.
A very rare vintage of sophisticated fare in Ybor.
Menu: Cheese and meat platters latters of meat and cheese, $11 to $24; entrees, $15 to $45.
Wine list: 30 labels by the glass or 800labels by the bottle. Pricing: $5 to $20 by the glass; a minimum of $20 by the bottle.
- Tastings, A Wine Experience, 149 First Ave. N, St. Petersburg, (727) 894-2255.
The sleek chrome kiosks are Italian, the decor millennial wine bar: leather sofas, high-top tables, glossy counter and private room.
The ways to taste wine are endless: By the ounce and half drop, ample big reds at $1.70 for an Italian blend or $9.10 for a fine Napa 2003. If you like one, have a full glass, as many ounces as you choose, or better, buy the bottle.
The eating is fine for munching or lunching, although Americans shy from wine bars at noon. They needn't. There are flatbread pizzas, ciabbata sandwiches, contemporary salads, antipasto patters 20 cheeses and meats and toasted nuts or roasted olives.
Founded in St. Petersburg, Tastings brought Euro-technology to the wine party. It has opened a second in Jacksonville and plans a third in Dallas.
Menu: Cheese platters, salads, pizzas and sandwiches with Mediterranean flavors, $4 to $24.
Wine list: 120 wines by the sample, glass or bottle. Pricing: By the glass, $9 to $17, by the bottle, $10 to $185.
[Last modified June 25, 2007, 17:39:02]
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