How Italian Wine Bars Just Get It Right
If more places used the Italian enoteca model, the wine world would be a better, more inclusive place
Is the above a picture of a wine shop or a wine bar?
Well, it has shelves and people just out of shot are browsing and buying bottles to take away. It must be a shop.
Yet there are tables and chairs. Behind you, a steady stream of people are buying glasses or bottles and spilling out onto the street. So, a bar then.
Wait, there’s a bit of food too. A cheese plate. Olives. Marinated vegetables. Is this a restaurant? Can you reserve a table and eat here?
This, my friends, is an Italian enoteca, an hybrid wine store and bar, often with a few snacks slung from a tiny kitchen. Enotecas are places where you can buy a bottle to take home and / or sit at a table to drink a glass (or bottle) and take a snack.
I snapped this particular picture during a visit to Rome last week but you see enotecas everywhere in Italy — I must have visited over 100 of them during my wine career.
I love them because they are the best, cheapest, and most inclusive way to buy and enjoy wine. I love them so much that I used them as the blueprint for my own hybrid wine store and bar in the…
