Selling the Food Connection

The newest thing in wine retail is restaurants.

For the past few years, the action in the Washington area wine scene has been primarily in restaurants. Wine bars have become the place where oeno-savvy consumers look for interesting labels from small artisanal producers. Sustainable, organic and biodynamic wines were touted on wine lists before turning up on wine shelves (where they still appear only rarely). While many stores stick with the same old bottles and rely on high scores from magazines to move them, restaurants and wine bars have pushed the envelope with wines from unknown regions and unusual grape varieties.

So it shouldn't be surprising that restaurants are opening wine stores. Stir Restaurant Group, which operates Zola restaurant in Penn Quarter, launched Zola Wine and Kitchen in December, just around the corner from its namesake restaurant. The store features about 1,400 square feet of retail wine space plus a spacious kitchen for tastings and wine and food seminars. Wines are arranged from lightest to darkest, an innovative approach but confusing, as wines from the same region can be found in different areas of the store. The arrangement keeps food and wine pairings in mind.

"We felt we could bring a personal knowledge of what people like when they're dining, since our business is matching food with wine," said Dan Mesches, head of Stir Restaurant Group. "Not that other retailers can't do food-wine pairings, but when you work with it every day, it gives you a little insight into what people are looking for."

Mesches and his partners echoed that concept when they launched their new Italian restaurant, Potenza, near McPherson Square this spring. A few doors down, they opened a tiny wine shop, Potenza Wine, with a selection almost exclusively of Italian wines.

Diane Gross and Khalid Pitts solidified the wine bar trend in Washington when they opened Cork Wine Bar north of Logan Circle early last year. Their extensive list of wines, all value-priced and from tantalizingly obscure regions of Europe, has helped make Cork more than a neighborhood hangout. It's a destination spot for wine lovers.

This fall, the couple will open Cork Market a few hundred feet up the street from the restaurant. The store will offer all of the wines from the restaurant list -- with the same bin numbers, for customers who are bad at remembering wine labels -- as well as takeout fare. Think of it as a chance to have the Cork experience at home. Cork Market will have "a neighborhood country store feel," Pitts said, but also enough space to hold wine- and food-tasting classes.

This is one trend where the District has lagged behind the suburbs. Planet Wine & Gourmet and the adjacent Evening Star Cafe opened a decade or so ago in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria, and Tallula in Arlington has its own small wine shop, as does the Crystal City branch of Jaleo. Iron Bridge Wine Co. in Columbia and Warrenton successfully combines the retail and restaurant models. And the owners of Restaurant Vero and Tap & Vine in Arlington opened Grape Juice Wine Shop two years ago. Just five doors down from their restaurants, the store provides an easy answer to a diner's question, "Where can I get this wine?"

Traditional wine stores probably have little to worry about from this new competition. They still carry the volume and selection that will keep customers coming in. But the new stores are innovative, and they are reaching out to wine lovers who dine out a lot. More important, they are making explicit the connection between wine and food. That's a connection wine lovers have been arguing for years, one that gets blurred when wine is sold alongside liquor, as an intoxicant rather than a vital part of a meal.

Dave McIntyre can be reached through his Web site, http://www.dmwineline.com, or at food@washpost.com.