And maybe this year we'll buy two bottles, so we can have one with dinner. Wine Time, 2471 Fairview Ave., Roseville; 651.697.0159
Michael Dvorak
Something special, by definition: Sam's Washington Avenue Wine Shop's Sam Haislet
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Cesare's Wine Shop and Marketplace
Somewhere in Minnesota there are people who spend on a bottle of wine what others spend on a month's rent. It's a safe bet that those people know about Cesare's, the Stillwater wine shop that opened about three months ago on the site where the old territorial prison burned down. Robert Alexander, one of the four owners of what he calls "the empire" (the Cesare's Wine Bar, a restaurant, opened about three years ago, four blocks from where the wine shop is now), says that the shop regularly sells $900 bottles of wine. Wine at the next level, from $200 to $600, pretty much flies out the door at the rate of about one bottle a day.
"We don't sell too much under $20," says Alexander. "When people come here, they tend to come here looking for that special bottle--something unique--and they're ready to pay some money for it."
At the same time, one of the reasons they come to him, says Alexander, is because they know he'll treat them right. "Our markup here is one and half times over list," he explains. "I get really upset when the Wine Spectator puts us in the expensive category. I really do want to beat somebody up."
His reasoning? It's all in the math. "I could buy swill at $1 a bottle and put it on the shelf for $4, and I'd be called cheap," he says. "But I buy $100 wine and sell it at $150 and I'm expensive."
Cesare (pronounced chez-ar-AY) is a common Italian man's name; Alexander and his wife Leslie, a co-owner, and the other owners, Kirsten Lysne and Rich Lay of south Minneapolis, are seasoned Italian travelers, so it's no surprise that most of the wine at Cesare's is Italian. Not all of it, though. "We've got wine from every country in the world that produces wine that we think is worthwhile, including from Lebanon," says Alexander. "We had 55 different styles of Pinot Noir way before the movie Sideways even came out."
All the wines that appear on the restaurant's 500-bottle list are sold in the shop. Most of them are from small producers, most of whom the Alexanders have met.
"There are very few of the foreign wines where we've not been to the region and in most cases met the producer," says Alexander. "We're definitely boutique--very few things here are mass produced."
They take good care of their wine, too--anything over $80 is stored in a mahogany-paneled, humidity-controlled room. "If we have to sit on a wine for five, seven, ten years, they know [the wine's] been taken care of," says Alexander. "People who are into that kind of thing, they know the questions to ask."
There's a big picture window in the side of the room, so you can ogle these top-shelf wines even if you're not going whip out the Visa: Fondling the bottles is, of course, discouraged, unless you're ready to cough up that rent money. Cesare's Wine Shop and Marketplace, 610 N. Main St., Suite 100, Stillwater; 651.439.7111
