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Favorite Place to do a wine tasting: The Wine Merchant covers the bases with classes and samplings
• by Glenn Bardgett - Photo by Jonathan Swegle
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As I looked at the readers’ choice categories this year, I anticipated receiving the same assignment as last year: favorite wine list. But when Andy Ayers and Riddle’s Penultimate Café and Wine Bar won again, I was charged with something new. The ambiguity of the favorite wine tasting category made me look at all areas of wine tasting, and as far as places in St. Louis, the readers were right: There is nowhere else that covers more bases than The Wine Merchant or, as many call it, The Merch. The Wine Merchant, co-owned by John Nash, promotes and succeeds in all areas related to the subject of wine tasting.
If you want to learn about wine, you have several options. You can visit local wineries, taste wine and talk to winemakers. You can attend any one of many classes given by local community colleges or even the acclaimed Missouri Botanical Garden. But to interact with legendary winemakers and meet the top importers of the greatest wines in the world, there is probably no better action you can take than to get on The Wine Merchant’s mailing list.
On the informal side of wine tasting, both the Clayton and the Creve Coeur locations sample at least four wines on Thursday, Friday (both days beginning at 4 p.m.) and Saturday (from noon to 7:30 p.m.) Themes change weekly and may be as simple as new arrivals or as complex as international examples of the same grape. At quarterly mega-samplings, as many as 20 wines will be uncorked. These informal events require no reservations, but the store encourages customers to sign up for the quarterly grand tastings so enough food is available. Patrons are welcome to stay as long as they like to enjoy interesting artisan cheeses that complement the wines. (Not simply a wine shop, The Wine Merchant has also received a great deal of attention for its superior cheese selection. “We will be adding more cheese cases very soon, even if we have to remove a row or two of wine racks,” Nash said.)
Regarding more formal and structured events, Nash said, “We pretty much do whatever the customer wants.” It’s not surprising, considering his success since opening in 1992 (the Creve Coeur location followed in 1998). Although Nash will do customized events in private homes or at other locations such as The Tap Room, most of the organized classes are done in the stores. Larger events may require lining up many tables for major wine rock-star-type notables, but mostly they are held at the Clayton store’s boardroom-like table, which comfortably seats a dozen, and at table in front of the cheese case in Creve Coeur.
Classes are conducted by store personnel, unlike at many other stores, which frequently rely on wholesale reps. The beer and spirits classes are led by Clayton store manager Dave Davis, while cheesemonger Simon Lehrer “conducts wine classes, beer classes and our very popular wine and cheese pairing classes,” said Nash. The advantage of using in-house instructors is that when customers return, they will see familiar faces and build that ever-so-necessary relationship between a wine purveyor and wine consumer. You might find better prices at huge discount stores, but the greatness of small wine shops is the ability of the staff to learn the tastes, both likes and dislikes, of their customers.
For some of the larger events, such renowned wine personalities as Bobby Kacher of Robert Kacher Selections, Peter Weygandt of Weygandt-Metzler Importing, Kermit Lynch and Bruce Neyers from Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant and Terry Theise of Terry Theise Estate Selections, among others, have held court amongst the wine racks on Hanley Road. These are some of the most esteemed representatives of stellar wines from Europe’s greatest wine regions. From California, James “Bo” Barrett of Chateau Montelena Winery, Margaret Duckhorn from Duckhorn Vineyards and Patrick Campbell of Laurel Glen have showcased the best of what Napa and Sonoma produce. These events are the wine equivalents of seeing a Tim McGraw or Rolling Stones concert at the Savvis Center, only quieter and less expensive, depending on how much wine you purchase to take home.
On a more personal and local note, if The Wine Merchant paid a bit more attention to local wines, it would make the enormous local and regional respect for its stores and the plentiful, well-deserved awards even more meaningful. There are rows and rows of racks filled with some of the most prestigious wines in the world, many of which are very rare and seldom found in St. Louis. You will find hundreds of the most highly sought single-malt Scotches, cognacs, Armagnacs, cordials and hand-crafted beers from small producers, but only a small, sparsely filled rack of Missouri wine tucked away in a corner in the back. I know that wine sales are dominated by the great wines of the West Coast as well as the extraordinary vineyards of Europe, but some of the more than 4 million bottles Missouri produces annually deserve to have a home in the esteemed and prestigious wine racks of The Wine Merchant.
Do yourself a favor and sign up for the online newsletter at www.winemerchantltd.com. If you want to learn about the taste, geography, history and use of wine for daily dining and social pleasure, there is no better place than these two stores.
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