About Tastings
Thirty-five years of putting Charlottesville in touch with its palate.
When Tastings opened in 1990 it was the only fully integrated wine shop, wine bar and restaurant on the East Coast. Decades later, there is still only a handful of places in the country like it, and none with this room’s mileage. These days it runs small, on purpose: Bill and Deb, the shelves, and the regulars.
“My mantra from the beginning has been to put the customer in better touch with his or her palate. To this end, I taste everything before buying. I do not rely on point scores from wine journalists to sell you wine. I generally ask lots of questions to learn your tastes.”
The New York Times called him a leading authority on Virginia wines. John Hailman, who wrote the book on Jefferson and wine, called him the region’s leading raconteur and purveyor of historic wines. A reviewer called him, with perfect affection, a self-named curmudgeon. All three are the same person, and he is also the chef.
The ledger
Fifty years on the same few downtown blocks.
- 1968
- Bill Curtis arrives from upstate New York for graduate history at UVA. His first hospitality job is the Hunt Room of the old Monticello Hotel on Court Square.
- 1972
- Two bottles of German wine at a Virginia Safeway, ten cents apart: Blue Nun, and a Kallstadter Saumagen Riesling Spätlese that wins by a mile. In his words, an epiphanic moment.
- 1976
- Takes over the old hotel spaces: Court Square Tavern downstairs, the Monticello Room upstairs. Within a year the Tavern stocks 127 imported beers.
- 1981
- Founds the Wine Club of Charlottesville in the Monticello Room. It meets continuously for four decades.
- 1980s
- Hosts early Monticello Cup judgings; runs blind flights where Virginia wines place against the world.
- 1990
- Buys the former Bixby's sandwich shop on Market Street and opens Tastings: the East Coast's first restaurant, wine bar and retail wine shop under one roof.
- 1999
- The web arrives at 502 E Market: tastingsofcville.com goes up, cherub and all, with the wine list and newsletter online before most restaurants had a phone book ad.
- 2020
- COVID closes the dining room; the house pivots to takeout and retail without missing a beat, per the regulars. Chef Pete Boyer, courted for 25 years, finally joins.
- Today
- Bill and Deb run the joint themselves. Same room, same rule: nothing on a shelf Bill hasn't tasted first.
“Or he could sit at the bar in Tastings, Charlottesville’s remarkable wine shop/restaurant/tasting room, and swap stories with Bill Curtis, the region’s leading raconteur and purveyor of historic wines.”
“He” being Thomas Jefferson — the closing lines of John Hailman’s Thomas Jefferson on Wine, 2006
The room
A room that works for a living.
Wine shop in front, restaurant in back, Burgundy maps on the wall, crate-lid tables, a corner of the Market Street parking garage overhead. Restaurateur Wilson Richey put it plainly: when he moved to town he tried to get a job here, because it was obviously the best business idea in town.
People stay for decades here. Deb has worked the room since the early years, and today she and Bill run the joint themselves, two people and thirty-five years of cellar. Bill’s explanation: “You’ve got to want to gather something akin to a family around, a nexus of positive energy.”
How the wine bar works →
