On a vacation in the Caribbean, entrepreneur Jon Halper was wooed by a wine bar that offered tastes of several wines, each pour activated by a card system. After tasting a few, he was able to select a bottle to bring to dinner.
"Everybody had a ton of fun," he said. "I planted it in the back of my mind."
The ability to offer samples of so many wines has to do with a "preservation system" that keeps each one at the right temperature. About eight months ago, Halper met someone who sells those systems, and "everything clicked," he said.
"We're in the middle of the pandemic, and knowing that we will come out of this and people are going to want a social experience and a way to come together — and knowing how much people enjoy wine and learning about wine, I started working with my team to formulate a plan to open a wine bar," he said.
Halper owns Top Ten Liquors, a small chain with 12 stores in the Twin Cities metro area. When the 13th store debuts next spring, that self-serve, card-activated wine-tasting experience will be a part of it.
Located in a former Champps at Ridgedale Center in Minnetonka, Wineside will be a hybrid liquor store, restaurant/wine bar and grocery store. The 12,000-square-foot space gives each of those elements room to spread out. More than half of it will go to the liquor store, which will have some 3,000 bottles of wine as well as beer and spirits.
The restaurant will serve food that pairs best with the 100 wines available by the glass for tasting: cheese, charcuterie, sandwiches and salads. In the 5,000-square-foot grocery store, customers can pick up some of those cheeses and cured meats to go.
"We really want to offer the best of the best of cheese, charcuterie, spices, chocolates, things like that, that we'll be able to turn into the food that we serve on the wine side. A chef will be able to take those ingredients and turn them into a really complementary food to go along with the wine," Halper said.
