Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 15, 1995 TAG: 9511150030
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
With its walls lined with floor-to-ceiling wine racks and its shelves stocked with gourmet crackers and sauces, Lee & Edwards Wine Merchants doesn't look much like a classroom.
But Edward Kohn and Lee Tucker want their customers - wine experts and novices alike - to leave the shop a little bit more wine-savvy than they were when they came in.
"Wine is an educational process," Kohn said.
"And the beauty of this is, we're basically wine educators," Tucker said.
A glass-topped table and a cluster of chairs are the first things customers will see when they walk through the front door of the new South Jefferson Street shop. The table is spread with wine magazines. The cushioned chairs - upholstered in a wine-bottle print - invite conversation. This, said Kohn, is the store's focal point, a place for customers to ask questions without fear of being ridiculed by what he and Tucker call "wine snobs."
The great question for many wine drinkers, Tucker said, often has to do with price. Is a $10 bottle twice as good as a $5 bottle? Is a $20 bottle four times as good?
It should be a matter of taste, Kohn said, not of arithmetic.
"If they know it's good and they like it, that's enough," he said. "If they decide that all they want to spend is $5, they will have the best $5 bottle of wine they'll ever find."
Lee & Edwards is not the only wine shop in Roanoke - or even the only one downtown. Some of the existing merchants may see the new shop as competition, but others - like Rob Callahan, who works in the wine cellar at Wertz's Country Store on the Market - say they'll welcome the new store if it draws attention to the rest of the area's wine shops.
"There's enough wine out there that three stores could have three completely different selections," Callahan said.
Kohn, who has been in the wine business for almost 25 years, came to Roanoke from Washington, D.C., at Tucker's urging. Tucker - a pathologist at Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley and the owner of nearby Chardonnay and Gewrztraminer vineyards - used to drive the three-plus hours to Kohn's shop to buy wines he couldn't find in Southwest Virginia.
"But there's no truth to the rumor that it was cheaper for me to buy and renovate this building than to keep buying wine from Ed," Tucker insisted with a laugh. "There's absolutely no truth to it!''
Tucker bought the three-story building, a former doctor's office, in the spring. He keeps an apartment on the top floor. The second floor is vacant.
On the first floor, Tucker and Kohn have built wine racks and installed a walk-in wine cellar. The temperature in the cedar-lined room is kept at 55 degrees, the humidity at 70 percent. If the air is too humid, Kohn explained, bacteria will thrive. Too warm, and the wine will mature too quickly. They'll use the cellar to store some of the shop's more expensive offerings.
They'll sell 350 to 400 wines, as well as beer and gourmet foods. Some of the wines will change from time to time.
During the shop's opening week, they're offering Beaujolais nouveau, the traditional first release of the wine season, which is heralded in France with huge annual celebrations. This wine usually reaches markets the size of Roanoke a few weeks after its European release, but Kohn and Tucker are having it flown directly from France on the same day that it makes its French debut.
"We want to introduce new things to Roanoke," Tucker said.
"We will appeal most definitely to the broad spectrum of wine drinkers," Kohn said. "I think a lot of Roanoke is ready for this."
by CNB