The Wine Shop · 502 E Market St
Every bottle here
has been through Bill's glass first
shop hours Tue–Wed 10–7 · Thu–Sat 10–9 · 434-293-3663
The retail floor. You enter by the side door and make your way through stacks of thousands of bottles.
House doctrine
Six rules the shop has kept since 1990.
An outstanding wine shop in its own right, run on one mantra: put the customer in better touch with his or her palate.
Nothing goes on a shelf that hasn't been through Bill's own glass. Doctrine since 1990, confirmed in print in every decade since.
Point scores are, in Bill's words, about the worst way to interface with your palate. The shop runs on questions instead.
His sharpest suit, village wine to bottles with real age. Ask what the Rateau Beaune is doing on the crate-lid table.
A leading authority on Virginia wines, said The New York Times. He judged the early Monticello Cups and has championed the state since the eighties.
An annual buying trip for, in his words, porch-sippin' Pinot: value hunted in person, tasted at the source.
Any bottle joins lunch or dinner for five dollars over the shelf price. The shop is the wine list.
The consultation
Tell Bill three things and leave with the right bottle.
What do you like, what do you want to spend, what are you eating. That conversation has matched Charlottesville to its wine for thirty-five years, weeknight Beaujolais to birthday Burgundy. Cases, cellars and gifts get the same treatment; one reviewer walked out with “a perfect wine for dinner and a bottle of wine gift for a friend.”
Wine 101, taught by the man who will be behind the counter.
“A $50 bottle of wine in the store is a $55 bottle in the restaurant.”
— a regular, TripAdvisor, and the house arithmetic since 1990
The aisle between you and dinner, rendered from the house photographs.