Wine Shop Wednesday: A Month in Business

This is one of several recurring posts from David Lazarus about the intricacies of opening and running a wine shop. David's posts will appear on Wednesdays.

As we come to the conclusion of our first full month in business and enter our sixth week of operation, our store has had a week of ups and downs.

Last week we had tow special tastings, both with winery principals. Our Tuesday tasting went very well and was well attended (for the short notice and considering we are new), while our Thursday event was a great chance to get to know Brent Shortridge better, but Jan and I were basically the only ones there. The lesson from these two events, do not assume anything. I had thought Tuesday would be the dud and clearly I was wrong.

That aside, we still had our best week yet! We had a number of people venture in on Saturday to sample from the dozen or so bottles that were open. Sales throughout the week were strong; all in all it was an encouraging week.

That said I am still slogging through the checks of inventory and pricing in our POS system and our Quickbooks is not yet integrated with the POS system. Aggravation levels are diminishing as more aspects of the business run smoothly and I think we will be in good shape by the time that the holidays get into over drive.

As I said with my last post none of this would be possible without the customers who have both found us for the first time and those who I have known for years. When this business is a success, I can claim some credit, but more will go to our customers, my wife, and all of the others who have helped to get this store off of the ground.

Wine Shop Wednesday: Opening Glitches

This is the one of several recurring posts from David Lazarus about the intricacies of opening and running a wine shop. David’s posts will appear on Wednesdays.

We finally got the store open to the public and made our first sale. It should be great and we should be able to relax and just sell wine, right? Not so fast! There were a few glitches upon opening.

We opened our door with a fancy point-of-sale (POS) computerized register that turned out to be non-operational. That means no inventory control, no fancy receipts, no tracking customer sales history. This made life harder since much of the wine sold in the first several weeks was not tracked and I only noticed sales after several bottles of a wine had been sold. Although this was a major headache and somewhat embarrassing, it was not the only glitch at opening.

We had been so busy just getting the store set up that we hadn’t remembered simple things like bags for our customers to carry the wine home. We also had not done anything about wine accessories. It took about a week after opening for me to find a source for the bags, and then another week or so before I got the wine accessories ordered. But the store was finally beginning to reflect what I’d envisioned.

What more could we have to worry about? Now we can sit back and sell wine! Well, now that we have our working POS system, we still have to proof the nearly seven hundred listings to correct any mistakes in the transfer of data and put in pricing where it was left out. We also have a weekly task of selecting the theme of the Friday wine tasting, the complementary food, and then getting the whole thing in place on Friday. It is a lot of work and yes, some of the tasks will remain as part of our weekly list of tasks, but eventually it will become easier as it becomes part of our routine.

Glitches aside, I have been pleasantly surprised with the response of the neighborhood surrounding our store. We have made sales every day we have been open and better than half of those have been to new customers. We have even had new repeat customers. All of this in just three weeks! Are we making money yet? Certainly not, but we do have decent cash flow for a brand-new business. Under the circumstances (economy and new business), we are doing better than anyone would have expected.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of those who have patronized  our new venture and encourage those who love interesting wines to come and check us out.

Wine Shop Wednesday: Stocking and Shelving

This is the one several recurring posts from David Lazarus about the intricacies of opening and running a wine shop. David's posts will appear on Wednesdays.

In my last post, I stopped right as we had applied for our license and had started contacting wine distributors.

The fun was really beginning. We were tasting wine in preparation for stocking the store. I had already ordered our wine racks and since they had been delayed by several weeks, I figured we would be delayed in getting things going. Well, we got the liquor license in the mail just a couple of weeks after the final hoop had been jumped, surprise!

The racks are still not here we have just begun sampling wine. The holiday season is still several months away, so no sweat. We also needed to come up with a logo, cards and a sign. We had decided on a name: the building sits right across the street from Mt Washington’s iconic art deco water tower, so of course we should call our store Water Tower Fine Wines. We contacted a graphic designer, who proposed several concepts and we gave our input. It took three more visits and three weeks until they finally produced the drawing that I had asked for after the first meeting. We had our logo and business card design.

The fun part was actually anything but … I am not saying that sampling all of those wines was not fun, in fact, that part was great. The hard part was the the decisions I had to make. After all, I couldn't buy every wine I liked! The obvious reason, money, was a factor, but space was also a major piece of the puzzle. I had planned to open with 400-500 wines, and I really tried to stay within that number, but there were just too many good wines out there and some of the distributors got to me after I had already filled the bulk of my slots. I could not help myself, I had to buy more. The remaining distributors got fewer orders and yes there are wines I wanted to buy, but did not. I hope to bring some of them in the future. Even with a little self restraint, I still ended up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 wines.

I ordered the wines and set the deliveries for the week before we planned to open. I figured this would be plenty of time. Wrong. We had scheduled to host a fundraiser at our house the Sunday before we were to open. Just a little more pressure, no problem.

The deliveries were a special joy all to themselves. I had ordered three bottles of each wine selected, so there were many split cases with three bottles of four different wines each. Each and every bottle needs to be checked in and at least one of the distributors could not seem to get all three bottles of the same wine in one case! At least when this wine came in the salesman came in and helped check the wine in.

Once all the wine was in the store, we had to hand price every bottle, plan out the racks and place the wines. I had rack space for about 480 different wines and almost seven hundred different wines. So I had to run out and get metal racks to hold the overflow. We were working to get wines shelved until we opened our doors and actually had four cases still not priced or on display.

During our first week being open, we have had multiple sales each day even though we have done no promotion. Our computerized cash register and inventory system is still at least a week away from being installed, but we have been able limp along with a cash register left by the previous owners. This has a lot of work, more than I anticipated at the outset.  Having to select a large number of wines at once to stock a store is difficult. I ended up caving to my desire to have a lot of neat wines and thus have more wine in the store than I had intended. Hopefully our customers appreciate the unique selection.

Wine Shop Wednesday: Planning

This is the first of several recurring posts from David Lazarus about the intricacies of opening and running a wine shop. David's posts will appear on Wednesdays.

Last week my wife and I realized a portion of a dream we have nursed for the past ten years or so. We opened our very own wine store! If you had asked me ten years ago what it would be like to accomplish this I would have said just order the wine, load up the racks and open your doors. I probably would have said the same thing as recently as 4 months ago. Now that we have done it, I can say that it is far from that easy and some of the tasks that I thought would be easiest turned out to be the hardest.

We started our journey roughly four months ago, after an attempt to buy an existing wine store fell through. Our first hurdle was finding a location. We had several ideas and contacted a real estate agent who investigated several properties, which found were either not available or way too expensive. The agent made several suggestions none of which appealed to us. Then my wife suggested we investigate a building five minutes from our home, which had been empty for several months. The building had lots of charm and was located in near the Mt Washington business district. It had off street parking, a small commercial kitchen and spaces perfectly suited for a retail store and a wine bar. It was perfect.

We started negotiations and quickly came to an impasse, as the owner was unwilling to budge much on price. We had several choices at this point: we could start looking again or we could meet his price. We spent a week or so looking at several other properties in the area, but found nothing as suitable and ready to go as the building on which we had made the offer. We decided that it would make sense to spend a little more money than we had intended so that we could be open in time for the holiday season. We felt that since so little needed to be done to the building in Mt Washington, we would save money in the long run, by not having to do many improvements and being able to open sooner.  We were right on the second point anyway. The building, which we ended up buying, had a few warts. It needed a new roof and box gutters, cha ching! It needed new heating and cooling, cha ching!

The next challenge was transferring the liquor license from its previous owner. There were many hoops to jump through, not mention the hefty check to purchase the license itself and the fee to the attorney who brokered the deal. We also had pre-inspections by the health department (mostly because the license we were buying was a restaurant license), the building department, the police and last but not least, liquor control. We survived all of these with only a few scrapes. We had a few minor tasks we had to get done before final inspection. A couple of weeks later, we were ready and scheduled the follow-up inspections, which we passed with flying colors. Hooray! Now we had to wait for Columbus to process the transfer and mail us the license. We thought this might take several weeks and began making contact with the various wine distributors in anticipation of getting our license.

Tune in next Wednesday for the process involved in selecting the wines.

Guest Post: When You Wish Upon a Grape: Disney-Related Wines

While Kevin & I are in Alaska, we've asked some friends and
colleagues to post on their wine loves, wine experiences and more. For
this post we welcome Tom Streeter and Carla Gesell-Streeter, who are dear friends and like me, they are fellow Disney addicts. Tom & Carla run the popular blog Hoperatives.com, a
Cincinnati based beer blog aimed at Believers in Better Beer (In Cincinnati
and Beyond), but they love wine too. Thanks Tom & Carla – and happy anniversary!
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We
love Disney and we love wine (almost as much as beer).  For the longest time, we’ve been
wanting to have friends over for a themed wine tasting.  There are three great Disney-related
wines out there. All are from California, appropriately enough, though each is
produced in a different part of the state.  These wines are frequently featured at restaurants at Walt
Disney World, Disneyland and on the Disney Cruise ships and most are also
available in the Cincinnati area.

Silverado Vineyards:
Stags Leap District of Napa Valley, California

Image Credit: Joe Shiabotnick

Owned
by Diane Disney Miller (Walt’s daughter) and her husband Ron Miller (former
president and CEO of Walt Disney Productions), Silverado was established in
1981. The Millers purchased
existing vineyards and originally intended only to grow grapes, but decided to
build their own winery a few years after purchasing the land. The winery was
designed by architect Dick Keith and is reminiscent of the old California mission-style
structures found in the area. The
name comes from a nearby abandoned silver mine.

Current winemaker Jonathan Emmerich produces Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Merlot, Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon,
and some special limited reserve wines. 
Prices begin at about $20.00 a bottle.

Fess Parker Winery: Los
Olivos, California

Image Credit: Spencer Cross

Fess Parker was an actor who is famous for playing the original Disney Davy Crockett. (He also starred in Old Yeller.) Fess Parker is no longer westerns and coonskin caps, however. His name is increasingly associated more with his wines. Much like the Millers of Silverado, Fess Parker and his family originally
intended only to have a small vineyard and source grapes to local producers. They quickly added not only a winery,
but also an inn. Son Eli Parker
started as an assistant winemaker, moved into the position of winemaker in 1995,
and now serves as President. Daughter Ashley Parker Snider started running the tastings and now handles the public relations, marketing and
sales.  Blair Fox is the current
head winemaker.

Fess Parker produces produces Reisling, Chardonnay, Viognier, Pinot Noir,
Syrah as well as several red table wines. Prices start at about $12.00 a
bottle.

MacMurray Ranch: Russian
River Valley of Sonoma County, California

Photo from winery web site

Besides
playing everyone’s favorite dad on My Three Sons, actor Fred MacMurray starred in several
Disney live action films including The Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded
Professor, and The Happiest Millionaire.  In 1941, the actor purchased land near Healdsburg, which became MacMurray Ranch, from descendants of the tract’s original 1846
homesteader.

Australian
Susan Doyle has been the MacMurray Ranch winemaker for more than fifteen
harvests.  The MacMurray vineyards
specialize in Pinot grapes so the wines produced are Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris.  Prices start at about $18.00 a bottle.

Guest Post: An Italian Wine Primer, Part 2

While Kevin & I are in Alaska, we've asked some friends and
colleagues to post on their wine loves, wine experiences and more. For
this post we welcome back Kevin Keith, continuing his post from last week.
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Welcome back, it’s Kevin Keith, your friendly neighborhood
wino from Liquor Direct, back with more Italian primer – this time we
take a brisk walk through the Italian wine landscape, starting at the top of
the boot, with the tiny region of the Valle d’Aosta.

Image Credit

Valle d’Aosta is
the smallest of the Italian wine regions, bordering Switzerland to the north,
France to the west, and Piedmont to the south and east.  An ancient growing region, grapes have
been cultivated since the Roman days, with around 22 varieties authorized for
growing, including Picotener (the local name for Nebbiolo), Neyret, Vien de
Nus, Fumin, Mayolet, Prie Route, Petit Rouge, Pinot Nero (Pinot Noir), Gamay,
Dolcetto and Syrah for the reds, and Moscato Bianco (also called Moscat de
Chambave), Pinot Grigio (also known as Malvoisie), Blanc de Morgex, Prie Blanc,
Muller-Thurgau, Chardonnay and Petit Arvine.  There are no DOCG wines from this area.

Piedmont means
“at the foot of the mountains.” 
This region is by far one of the most recognized regions in Italy.  It is the second largest region and has
the most DOC wines (over 40) and DOCG wines (7).  Most of the production of wine originates in the heart of
Piedmont, the Po River Valley. 
Here you will find Barolo, Barbaresco, Gattinara and Moscato
d’Asti.  The first three I
mentioned are all made with the Nebbiolo grape, and the last mentioned is from
the ancient Muscat grape.  Dolcetto
and Barbera are also widely planted red varieties, as well as Freisa,
Grignolino and Brachetto.  The most
popular white grape is the Cortese, used for the DOCG wine, Gavi.  Arneis (nicknamed the “white Barolo”)
and Erbaluce di Caluso are also grown. 
Another important wine product produced here is Vermouth, made with at
least 70% wine, and fortified and flavored with various roots, spices, herbs
and wood – this is what is known as an “Aromatic” wine.

Lombardy sits in
the semi-circle created by the Alps that enclose Italy to the north.  The mountainous north and the flat Po
River Valley in the south define the topography of the growing regions, which
are divided into three:  the
Valtellina in the North, the Oltrepo Pavese in the southwest, and the
Franciacorta in the east. 
Nebbiolo, known locally as Chiavennasca, is the primary red grape grown
in the Valtellina.  The Oltrepo
Pavese is known primarily for Pinot Nero. 
And the greatest sparkling wines from Italy come from the Franciacorta,
and is derived from Chardonnay, Pinot Bianco and/or Pinot Nero.

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Guest Post: A Culinary Tour of St. Louis (or, where the locals eat)

While Kevin & I are in Alaska, we've asked some friends and
colleagues to post on their wine loves, wine experiences and more. For
this post we welcome Kara Christopher, who has been a close friend for countless years.  Like me, Kara started blogging around the turn of the century. It's been a while! Kara lives in St. Louis and is, without a doubt, a foodie. She's also a foodie on a mission to get healthy, although you wouldn't know it from the culinary tour on which she's about to take you. St. Louis is a fun weekend trip – I've done it – and I highly recommend eating where the locals eat. Thanks Kara!
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While Shel is away in the wilds of Alaska, allow me to take you on a brief culinary tour of St. Louis. These are some of my favorite places, not necessarily the ones you'd be told to visit if you were in town for a weekend. Until now, at least.

I should probably tell you who I am, though. I'm Kara & I've been blogging about life, knitting, and everything else for a little over 5 years at StarMonkeybrass.com. The name is a play on the Beastie Boys Brass Monkey & came about because I like monkeys. I am a knitter, music geek, graduate student in biostatistics, and I like to eat. When I travel, I don't want to eat at chains, at least not ones that I can also eat at in St. Louis.

So let's say you find yourself in St. Louis for a weekend and you'd like a little guidance on where to eat. If you happen to be driving up from the south, I'd recommend a stop at Dexter BBQ for lunch. There are several locations, but the one in Cape Girardeau is about a mile off the highway and probably the easiest to find. I heartily recommend the sammich with slaw on it. *Drool*

Once you get into town and settle in on Friday night, you're gonna be hungry. I'm sending you to the Highway 61 Roadhouse & Kitchen in Webster Groves. Let's be completely honest: you're here for the fries. The Roadhouse Fries. They are a masterpiece in the world of potato products: waffle fries covered in pulled pork, a creamy cheese sauce, applewood smoked bacon, and scallions. And this is just the appetizer. I can recommend the burgers & pulled pork as entrees if you're feeling traditional. I love a good burger & the folks in the kitchen definitely know how to make one. I'd also recommend going with a side other than the fries since you just gorged on the ones in the appetizer. For a side, I'm a fan of the sweet potato pie. As tempting as it is to order the banana pudding for dessert, don't do it. You'll get dessert in about 20 minutes.

Once you've recovered from the pork-tastic goodness at Roadhouse, head back to Southwest City and stop off at Ted Drewes. There are two locations, but the original is on Chippewa. It's legendary around here and a Friday night is going to be busy. But it's so worth it – I swear they have the best banana split in St. Louis, although the concretes are what most people go for. My favorites are the Hawaiian & the All Shook Up (peanut butter cups & bananas).

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Guest Post: Wine & Your Health

While Kevin & I are in Alaska, we've asked some friends and
colleagues to post on their wine loves, wine experiences and more. Last week, David Lazarus offered a post and today, we get healthy with his wife, Jan Lazarus. Jan is a registered dietitian with a specialization in diabetes. This is timely, considering all the comments we get on our Slender wine posts. Thanks Jan!
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Image Credit

Being a dietitian and diabetes educator I receive many questions on the use of alcohol.  Since this is a wine blog I will focus on my attention to the consumption of wine and its benefits and detriments.

The one myth that I really would like to debunk is the number of carbohydrates in a glass of wine.  On average a 5-ounce glass of dry wine contains 110 calories, 5 grams of carbohydrates and 13 grams of alcohol which accounts for 91 of the 110 calories.  It is extremely frustrating to attend a function and overhear someone talking about falling off the low-carb diet wagon while having a glass of wine.  This is a perception created by a good marketing firm. 

Wine or any alcohol is metabolized in the body as a fat not a sugar; that is why excess drinking can add extra pounds of fat even when you are consuming a low-fat diet.  Wine is fermented and does contain some residual sugar, but a very small amount. 

There are positive attributes to wine especially red wine. This wine contains components that can increase your good cholesterol “HDL” and it also acts as an anti-coagulant preventing platelets to stick together and decreasing the chance of blood clots. On the flip side, over-consumption can lead to high blood pressure and increased triglycerides, not a good fat. 

For those with diabetes, alcohol actually lowers the blood sugar for up to 10 hours. This can result in a hypoglycemic state especially if they haven't eaten or are on certain medications. But this is not the recommended method for controlling blood sugar, I have had clients who have tried with unfortunate outcomes. 

Now how much is a drink?  Women should only have 5 ounces of wine per day and men no more than 10 ounce per day. (No, you cannot save them up and have them all in one day.  I get that question a lot.)  Moderate drinking can be very beneficial to your health, but when you go over the daily recommendations then the detrimental effects may occur.  The key to remember is, too much of a good thing is never good.

Guest Post: Visiting the Suisun Valley Wine Country

While Kevin & I are in Alaska, we've asked some friends and
colleagues to post on their wine loves, wine experiences and more. For
this post we welcome Jen Rizzo. Jen is a freelance motion graphics designer, part-time writer and Cincinnati
transplant based out of San Francisco. She is a self-professed beer
nerd living in the heart of wine country and spends her free time
getting to know the area around her from the saddle of a thirty year
old bicycle – she's also a good friend and I miss her. Thanks Jen!
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I moved to San Francisco from Cincinnati on Labor Day of 2008 and have made it a point to stay in the area for all the major holidays so I can learn how the city responds to them. I got to see the city empty out for Thanksgiving and Christmas, making it easier than ever to get a dinner reservation or sit at my favorite bar and not have to elbow people out of the way to get a drink. Of course, it didn't occur to me until two days before Memorial Day weekend that I lived in a major tourist destination. It was time to get out of the city.

This poses quite the challenge for me, you see, because I live in the Bay Area without a car. We're surrounded by all of this incredible terrain, and I see it all from behind the handlebars of a bicycle. This is great for being in the city, and it's very easy to ride over the Golden Gate Bridge to get into Sausalito and toward the mountains, but anything beyond about fifty miles is certainly a breaking point for me. So, I consulted the power of the internet, specifically twitter, to decide my destination for me.

I'm not hugely connected in social media, and my twittering is sporadic at best, but I do have a number of wine connections as well as cyclists and San Francisco residents. My needs were simple: I had never been to wine country in the nine months I lived here, I needed to be able to do it without a car, and I wanted somewhere that was going to give me a good day of bike riding. Oh, and I didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars to do it.

Napa was out. The tastings were too high and the hotels were either booked on the night I wanted to be there or astronomically expensive. Plus, my point was to avoid all the Memorial Day nonsense, and a tourist destination was not the place to do that. Our very own favorite wine blogger Michelle suggested Sonoma, but the bus from the city is really the only way to get there with bicycles, and it was going to take upwards of three hours one way.

Then a friend suggested a winery in Suisun Valley, a place I had never heard of. The hotels would be cheaper, he said, and the winery was only an eight mile ride from the Amtrak station. Upon digging around, I learned that there were in fact four wineries in Suisun Valley, and to visit all of them would be a perfect 25 mile loop from the train station, ending up at a hotel that was less than half the cost of a stay in Napa. Oh, and I could take two trains there in an hour and a half, and it would cost me less than $20 to get there, and bicycles were allowed the whole way. Sold!

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Guest Post: Kentucky’s Jean Farris Winery

While Kevin & I are in Alaska, we've asked some friends and
colleagues to post on their wine loves, wine experiences and more. For
this post we welcome Shannan Boyer, a local parenting blogger and one of the driving forces behind Cincinnati Women Bloggers – also one of my close friends! Thanks Shannan!
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Every summer our family packs up the car and heads down to
Somerset, KY for a little boating on Lake Cumberland.  The drive down is about 2.5 hours long, giving us plenty of
time to play car games and check out the scenery.  On our drive one of the things I’ve often noticed and have
always been curious about were the road signs posted along I-75 for local
vineyards.

Well this past weekend we headed down for our first trip of
the summer and this time, rather than driving straight through to Somerset, we
decided to be a little adventurous. We decided to pull off outside of Lexington
and visit Jean Farris, a cute vineyard located
off the very scenic Richmond Road.

Not having heard of Jean Farris, we had no idea what to
expect as we drove down Richmond Road. When we finally arrived, we couldn’t
believe how beautiful it was.  The
drive up to the main building was lined with rows and rows of grapes.  It was like nothing we’d ever seen
before.

While normally my husband and I would have sampled a few of
the wines before buying,  the
bistro was not open at the time we arrived, so we went with our guts and purchased
a bottle of their Riesling ($16).

From the label:

Cold fermented to
preserve the bright tropical fruits and citrus notes. This lightly sweet
Germanic white has a delicate balance, and soft floral notes.

Keep in mind I am no Michelle Lentz (ed. note: I think Shannan is doing just fine!), but I have to say that
this was one amazing Riesling. I found it to have a sweet taste and could
definitely identify the citrus notes.  The wine was smooth and I really
enjoyed the fact that it didn’t have a dry aftertaste.  If
you like dry wines, this would not be the wine for you. This wine was
extremely easy to drink, and in fact, my husband and I finished the entire
bottle in less than an hour – a feat for me – as usually I am a
VERY slow wine drinker.

We are heading back down to Lake Cumberland soon and
I will definitely be picking up a few bottles of their Riesling to have at
home. Overall if I was using Michelle’s rating system, I would
give Jean Farris’ Riesling a giant smiley face.

A local parenting
blogger, Shannan Boyer resides in northern Kentucky with her husband and two
young boys. When she’s not blogging about her family’s many adventures on her
blog Mommy
Bits, she and her family are likely to be found out exploring and
enjoying all that greater Cincinnati has to offer.