Wine Shop Wednesday: Domain Servin Vielles Vignes

This week we again welcome Bryant Phillips to Wine Shop Wednesday. You may remember Bryant from Sturkey’s or Chalk. Currently you can find him 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 visit whenever I’m on my way home from meetings in Dayton.

Surprising as it may be, we’ve been drinking some great Chardonnay at the Wise Owl.  Not surprising because Chardonnay isn’t great (although we’ve all had a few that aren’t), but because we’ve just been drinking so many heady, opulent reds during these past few frigid months. Particularly, we’ve stumbled upon a brilliant Chablis from Domaine Servin.  It’s their “Selection Massale” Vieilles Vignes 2005.

Domain Servin is a small family owned winery with just about 33 hectares of vineyard property including some 1er & Grand Cru parcels.  Chablis itself consists of about 6000 hectares.  The Servin name dates back to to the middle of the 17th century and has owned and worked the Domaine for seven generations.

For us, the ‘05 Massale is at once silky and yet rustic .  The bottle age has integrated the tell tale, flinty, minerality of Chablis. It also shows opulent baked apple and slight tropical notes.  Its deceptively dry even as the nose teases you with something like apple custard.  Balanced alcohol and an excruciatingly long finish make this wine our “go-to” wine for the springtime days that have us flirting with our T-shirt collection.

The fact that its only $50 on our list, makes this wine that much more appealing.

We’ve had a great few months at the Wise Owl.  We saw some great wines from Old Bridge Cellars, learned a ton about blind tasting and pinot noir, hosted an event with Some Young Punks, and Chef Dave’s new kitchen menu kept everyone warm and full.  March promises to be even better as we welcome a new acoustic duo and on March 24 we’ll see the glorious return of cocktail mistress Molly Wellman.

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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.