Austin wine powers

The Austin wine scene has sprung to life in just the past two decades, fuelled by tech-savvy professionals immigrating from Silicon Valley and the Pacific Northwest. Texas’s favourable business climate is credited for the boom, and no city’s felt it more than Austin. The city is young, intelligent, creative and adventurous, and the wine scene reflects this. Texas’s wine education conference TEXSOM — billed as the US’s largest — has awarded its Best Sommelier designation to an Austin sommelier seven out of 11 times.

Of the dozens of wholesalers and distributors, two significantly outsize the rest: Glazer’s, a third-generation family business founded in Dallas in 1933, and Republic National Distributing Company, with a distribution history in Texas dating back to 1939. Independent Austin retailers work with all shapes and sizes, however, to keep the city’s adventurous wine drinkers on their toes.

The Austin Wine Merchant

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The Austin Wine Merchant has been a cornerstone of the Austin wine scene since 1991, when John Roenigk and wife Lucinda, inspired by London’s Soho Wine Supply, opened their shop in a small cellar in an historic building downtown.

The shop moved around the corner in 1999 to a larger space, and is now co-owned with Greg Soechting and wife, but the focus remains on providing a meticulously curated selection of finer wines. Europe is particularly well represented (there are more than 500 labels of Burgundy alone), as are a respectable selection of “blue chip and a handful of newer” west coast US wines.

“We like to think that we’re picking from the best selection of wine on the planet,” says John Roenigk. “We want to buy the best representatives of any given area.” Beyond Burgundy, Roenigk mentions a return to Bordeaux (as price and demand dictate), and talks of customers experimenting with Piedmont and Valpolicella, and with Tuscany with Chianti and Brunello.

The European-merchant-style charm remains. Employees carry bottles from the aisles to the counter, and then out to customers’ cars. Roenigk and the shop are praised by customers and wine professionals alike. “John has created a community here,” says Darcy Sacks, store manager, “from a clientele perspective as well as helping to foster the wine scene, and the young, up-and-coming sommelier scene that we have here in Austin.”

Of course the fundamentals of a retail wine business remain. “We’re buying the best quality that we can find, and delivering it at a price our customers enjoy,” says Roenigk. “Because as much as folks want to support a local business, they demand that we be competitive, and we don’t mind working competitively. It makes it fun.”

East End Wines

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Not satisfied with simply being an extremely successful and popular retail wine, beer and spirits shop, Matt Miller, Sam Hovland and Bill McGuire of East End Wines exchanged their retail license to sell beer and liquor for the right to operate as a winery, allowing them sell retail, but also to open a wine bar, conduct classes, and host events and tastings.

The Victorian mansion atop a hill has since become a very popular spot for their great selection of “almost artificially low-priced” wines, with an emphasis on natural, organic and biodynamic. Take them to go or to sip on the patio, while perhaps getting a bite to eat from the food truck (Three Little Pigs, run by award-winning chef Raymond Tatum).

“We’re trying to run it like a large restaurant wine list rather than a small retail shop,” says Sam Hovland, certified sommelier and East End’s wine buyer. “We’re concentrating on clean, less-manipulated, higher-acid, lower-alcohol wines that go great with food.”

Hovland guesses they work with about 65 distributors, many of whom are very small operations representing small wineries. And he credits them for East End’s success. “The reason we can be in the same town as an 18,000-sq-ft array of wines is that we’re doing a lot more legwork,” he says. “We’ve got wines where the production is so small [the big chains] don’t even want to mess with them, so when people come into our shop, they see stuff they haven’t seen anywhere else. We are the de facto place to go to find more off-the-beaten-path things.”

Urban Wine + Liquor

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Urban Wine + Liquor is a boutique downtown wine shop and liquor store carrying about 350 labels representing “best-in-class values and selections”.

“The best part of being an independent store is we can carry a more select inventory,” says Marshall Jones, manager. “We don’t need to carry the mundane, over-sold brands seen in newspaper ads weekly.”

The downtown location poses the challenge of meeting the tastes of their downtown residents and workers, as well as a growing number of travellers and visitors, including bachelor and bachelorette parties, conference attendees, and families on vacation. One effect has been an increased interest in local wine, resulting in a growing local section.

“Austin presents an exciting challenge of trying to balance the well-known labels of California and France for those moving here from the West and East Coasts, while also choosing a more eclectic selection of blends and wines from other regions of the world,” says Jones. “With Austin's young, creative and adventurous lifestyle comes drinkers more willing to try something new and not necessarily fall into the trap of drinking the same wines and whiskeys again and again.”

South Lamar Wine & Spirits

southlamarwineandspirits.com

With nearly 6,500 wines available, family-run South Lamar Wine & Spirits has developed a reputation for friendliness and having a great selection of whatever their customers want, and that extends to beer, liquor, and even cigars and barware. Operating as Oak Hill Liquor for 17 years, they moved to a larger space and freshened up their name three years ago.

Estimating he deals with 30 to 50 distributors, owner Pete Petropoulos works hard to keep up with what his customers want, and he attributes this to their location. “In this neighbourhood people are pretty open-minded, they’re more liberal,” says Petropoulos. “Other places, people are more set in their ways, they want more mainstream wines. Here people want to explore, trying different wines from different regions. They want to experiment.”

SOLA, as it’s known, has a great selection of Spanish wines that are very popular right now, as well as a Greek selection featuring wines not found elsewhere. Chilean and Argentinian wines are popular, as are California Cabs — but French wines are not. “People don’t understand French wines that much,” says Petropoulos, “so they get discouraged by it.”

House Wine

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House Wine is primarily an on-premise wine bar, but they sell a fair amount of retail wine as well. Customers can sample any of the 100-plus wines and take a bottle home at a 30% discount off the on-premise price.

With a focus on boutique wines from the beginning (seven years ago), they’re acutely aware of how the massive population influx has altered the wine industry landscape. “We have seen greater and greater demand for more standard offerings like Kim Crawford, La Crema, Silver Oak,” says Ky Benko, wine director. “Yet we have stood by our credo of keeping wine ‘for the people’, and seeking out unique yet affordable wines to keep up with Austin's ‘Keep Austin Weird’ motto.”

Benko is quick to mention others in the community who are contributing, and describes the wine situation as going through a tremendous boom. “The scene in Austin definitely is changing, and people's wine tastes are evolving as well,” he says. “I would not be surprised if within the next three years Austin's wine dynamic rivalled that of Dallas or even San Francisco.”

Thom's Market

thomsmarket.com

The modestly sized South Austin boutique-type grocer has developed a devoted following for offering locally produced nutritional foods.

Store manager and wine buyer Myrna Sherman has a unique selection of “off-the-beaten-path” wines which are mostly small production and hand-crafted, yet most are available for under $20.00. “Space is limited,” says Sherman. “I taste all wines, and they must meet high standards.” This is good news not just for customers, but for staff as well, thanks to a rather amusing wine guarantee: “If you don’t like it, bring it back, and we’ll drink it!”

“We do a lot of hand-selling and get to know individual tastes, so every wine customer is happy with their choice,” she adds. “We compete with the big guys by being the best little guy you have ever met.”