MARYSVILLE — Wine lovers living in Marysville had few choices until recently for wine tasting, and they were located in Everett, Mount Vernon or Woodinville.
That changed with the opening of WineStyles at the Allen Creek Shopping Center off 64th Street NE.
WineStyles is a national franchise focused on making buying wine less intimidating. The store, owned by locals Vicki and Eric Emery, organizes its wines unconventionally by color and style, rather than varietals and region. Most of the 200 wines are priced between $9 and $25 a bottle.
Walk in and find the wines divided by characteristics such as bold, mellow and fruity for the reds and crisp, silky and rich for the whites. The sweet dessert wines fall under “nectar” and sparkling wines as “bubbly” Champagne-style wines. Signs also direct buyers toward what to pair wines with. Wines in the “bold” category, for instance, work best with spicy complex dishes and hard cheeses.
WineStyles isn’t a wine bar, but customers can buy wine by the glass or bottle and sip it at one of the store’s half dozen tables. Customers also can walk in for an impromptu tasting or join one of a scheduled theme tastings. The decor has an old world feel, with rounded alcoves in the wall holding the bottles.
“We want neighbors to walk over and share a bottle of wine,” Vicki Emery said.
So far, that’s who has been patronizing the shop. The No. 1 thing customers say to them is “I just live up the hill.”
The store offers a limited appetizer menu with cheese, crackers and other munchies. The Emerys also sell a selection of ales and wine-related merchandise such as cork screws, aprons and wine glass charms. Already the wine apparel is selling well, said the owners, particularly the women’s black T-shirts with three wine glasses and the words “Group Therapy.”
The company offers a wine club for $34.99 a month that includes two bottles of wine each month plus discounts at the store and reduced-price tastings.
Wines are selected by the franchise’s experts and include labels from off-the-beaten-path vineyards.
WineStyles isn’t the only franchise to try organizing wine in a new way. At least two others, Vino 100 and Best Cellars, use similar systems. Those are located in Bellevue and University Village in Seattle, respectively. WineStyles is a fast-growing franchise based in Florida with 183 stores in the United States and Mexico. Its stores in Washington are in Federal Way, Puyallup, Bonney Lake and Tacoma.
“For novice consumers, it’s the least confusing way to get into wine,” said John Bell, an award-winning vintner based in Marysville with his own label, Willis Hall. “Otherwise, you’re presented with a mass of wines. At least you know what section to gravitate toward based on your own palette.”
Bell is a customer, but one of his dessert wines also is for sale at the store.
This probably isn’t a store for serious wine connoisseurs, he said, but then again, the most serious wine drinkers wouldn’t bother with a wine shop; they’d order directly from their favorite wineries. He’s purchased several bottles and he thought they were a good value for the price.
“For the average wine drinker who likes a good selection of wines, they’re going to find good wines for a good price,” he said.
The Emerys are transplants who fell in love with the area after the Navy transferred them here. Eric Emery retired from a high-profile position as a command master chief for the Navy; he served as Everett’s top enlisted man on base during the homecoming of the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003.
The couple bring no professional wine experience to the venture, just a love of drinking the stuff. The franchise gave them an intensive training course that included sessions with a sommelier, as well as sessions on marketing and merchandising. But even Eric Emery master’s degree in public administration didn’t completely prepare him for starting a business.
“Opening a business is a lot harder in person than in class,” he said.
Most of the snags they’ve encountered were the unforeseeable kind: a botched floor job, problems signing up for utilities and a last-minute merchandise delivery on opening day.
The store almost didn’t happen in Marysville. The owners had to convince the franchise headquarters, which usually wants stores in areas where residents have ample disposal income; headquarters told the couple Bellingham or Seattle would be more desirable locales. But the couple persisted.
Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com.
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