Wine Shop Wednesday: The Most Expensive Wine in the Bar

This week we welcome Bryant Phillips to Wine Shop Wednesday. You may remember Bryant from Sturkey’s or Chalk. Currently you can find him out at the excellent Wise Owl Wine Bar in West Chester. If you’re anywhere near IKEA, you’re near the Wise Owl. Stop by and have a drink – it’s worth it. I visited last week and fell in love with the place.

Last week I got into a conversation with two of our guests about a particular wine.  In itself, this fact is not unusual; however, this wine happens to be on our list for $274.  We discussed the varietal composition, heritage, etc.  But after they left, I was still thinking about our 2006 Bodegas El Nido conversation even into the next day.

The wine is made by Aussie Winemaker extraordinaire Chris Ringland in the rustic dry region of Spain called Jumilla.  I usually tell people that El Nido is the Granddaddy of obnoxious Spanish wine.  I think that is a misconception though.  El Nido is more like your rich Uncle who lives in the city, drives a Porsche, is a consummate bachelor, and slips the kids an XBOX 360 for Christmas, even though they might not deserve it.

From the satin label to the inky black color, this wine exudes cool.  It’s capability to cellar for more than a decade is impressive, but so is it’s ability to be consumed right now, attributed to its powerful yet balanced structure and depth.

Wine Shop Wednesday: Relationships

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. I’m also starting to get interest from other wine shops, so hopefully we’ll be seeing a lot of different perspectives in this column.

There are several relationships that I must maintain in order to have our business continue to grow.  After the relationship with my customers, the interaction with my distributor representatives is probably the most critical to the business. The reps have the ability to either bring good deals or new products to my attention or just take my wine orders.

I tried to make it clear, to each of the almost dozen men and women who I work with, that our relationship is a partnership and that my aim is to treat them as partners. It is clearly in both of our best interests that I make money, since when I sell wine we both make money! I have seen situations where reps are treated like lackeys when they do not perform as the store owner expects them to.

Please do not get me wrong, I am far from perfect and am sure that I do not always treat our reps the as I have outlined above. I have however encouraged my reps to let em know when I am out of line. I have tried to be flexible. Jan and I have asked them to an appreciation dinner after the first of the year in the hope that we can cement the kind of relationship for which I am striving. Those of you who have shopped the store will benefit from this relationship through consistent good service and continued exciting new wines.

On a technology note we are still getting acquainted with our e-mail service, so there may be issues with timeliness of delivery. I will apologize in advance and keep my fingers crossed that we will get things figured out sooner rather than later. We are also planning a very special customer appreciation tasting for January and the date will be posted on the web site once it is planned. Also for those of you who are fans of great Champagne, we will be having a grower Champagne brunch the Sunday before Valentine’s day. This event is reservations only and should be really fun.

As always thanks to those who have already helped make this venture a success and we look forward to serving those of you who have not made it in yet.

___

Don’t forget to enter our contest for the red wine stain remover! Just leave a comment on the contest post and we’ll announce the three lucky winners on Thursday!

Wine Shop Wednesday: Day to Day

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. I’m also starting to get interest from other wine shops, so hopefully we’ll be seeing a lot of different perspectives in this column.

Store operations are starting to settle into a routine. Since we are a new store, we are not getting swamped like many other stores do this season. We have had a slight bump in our already steady sales. Thanks to Michelle and Kevin we were able to launch our e-mail newsletter this week, which makes it a lot easier to get the word out about goings on at the store. I continue to be surprised at the tremendous deals on fantastic wines on the Ohio side of the river. Many of these discounts remind me of those I was used to when I worked in Kentucky. I am happy to offer my customers such good deals and must refrain from taking wine home for myself.

We hosted dessert for the annual Water Tower lighting the Saturday after Thanksgiving and had several hundred people through our building. It was a good move to show our commitment to community involvement and all in all it went very well. The only issue I had was that they closed the street in front of our building several hours before the event started and had neglected to mention it beforehand. Hopefully next year we will coordinate better with the city. Our customer base continues to grow and our inventory is now almost nine hundred different wines.

Our computer system is almost complete. I had a scare the other day when it just quit on me. After three plus hours with my local computer specialist, we had salvaged the inventory and all other important data from the hard drive, which we determined was corrupted. I now have a temporary hard drive until we get a replacement for the damaged one. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the change out goes smoothly and that this is the last computer issue I have with our POS system.

I continue to be indebted to all of those who have helped our business succeed. To sign up for our new e-mail newsletter, go to the web site and click on subscribe at the bottom of the main page. Thanks again!

Wine Shop Wednesday: Sampling Wines

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.

Recently I met with a couple of small wine companies, one who distributes small Washington state wine and the other who imports a couple of wineries from Argentina. I was initially a little leery of the the Argentinean importer, because I have rarely been blown away by wine from Argentina. However, after trying a dozen of his wines  – from a $10 wine to the flagship wines in the upper $40 range -  my mind was very much changed. I ordered  almost a dozen of the wines I tried, including a Sangiovese  and high end Cabernet Franc. All were exceptional and good for the money.

I was able to try through three cases of wine with the gentleman from Washington State. I brought in another dozen wines from him, including a Riesling ice wine and some fantastic blends. These wines are all limited and I felt lucky to get a shot at them.

I am looking forward to doing tastings in the future featuring each of these new distributors. I also have a nice 2005 Bourdeaux coming that has been reduced by half at $19.99.  Daily operations are becoming normal and I am almost 2/3 through my proofing of the POS entries. I am looking forward to the gift giving season  and all the excitement to come.

Once again I want to thank all of you who have helped to make our venture a success so far and we look forward to serving you in the future.

Wine Shop Wednesday: Moving Right Along

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.

Things are starting to settle into a routine. We closed the books on our first month and I was very pleased with how we did; sales figures surpasses what I had anticipated. We must be doing something right!

There have been loads of year-end deals from the wineries and I have been bringing in the ones I think are the best bang for the buck. Our tastings continue to be well attended and I even figured out, thanks to Michelle how to add up to date info to our calendar of events on the web site. Thanks Michelle! We have planned some fun tastings through Thanksgiving and have more treats on the drawing board before Christmas.

Though most things are going well, I am still fighting with our POS system and the company I paid to set it up. I have made it through about half of the inventory, as far as cross checking what is entered into the computer. It will be a joy when this is done and functioning as it was intended. Construction on the store is almost finished for now and things are looking very nice. We may soon move our wine pouring station into the future tasting room and wine bar.

All and all for our first month-plus, I am thrilled with how we are doing. People are responding well to our marketing technique and my concept of a wine store and we have had a number of repeat customers. Knock on wood things are going well and hopefully as winter settles in and the holidays progress they will only get better. Thanks again to all of you who have helped to make this venture a success  this far!

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.