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Bar’s innovative system allows greater selection to sample.
It seems distinctly futuristic: The customer approaches a machine, inserts a card, studies a row of attached bottles, puts a glass under a spout, and pushes a button; the wine is delivered to the glass and the customer returns to a table to enjoy it.
This is not a scene from a science fiction movie — it’s happening at Wine Times 4 in the Village at Wexford.
Several restaurants on the island have their own wine bar, offering a range of wines by the glass. However, they typically offer wines priced in the low to mid range because wine has a limited lifespan in an opened bottle, and nobody wants to watch expensive bottles turn to vinegar.
One of the solutions, the Italian Enomatic system, stores and dispenses wine under an inert gas so that the wine is stable for a month after opening. This makes a wine bar with a broad variety of wines a viable possibility. The owners of Wines Times 4 discovered the system on a wine trip to Italy, and it is the central feature of the wine bar they opened last November with Joe Brockwell and Paul Voogd as partners and managers.
The machine is set to deliver a 5 ounce glass, a half-glass or a 1 ounce taste, and the price per ounce is much the same as the cost of a bottle in a restaurant. They offer 72 wines, and, trying to avoid “factory wines,” work with most of the South Carolina distributors to offer a range of wines from the smaller, interesting, producers. All the wines are also available by the bottle at regular retail price. The four options, taste to bottle, explain the “Times 4” part of the name of the venture.
There are wines from $1 a taste all the way up to $19 (Opus One). They come from all the major producing countries, providing the opportunity to see how wines from the same grape vary with the environment, and to explore wines made from some of the less common grapes.
There are descriptions of the wines next to the bottle, preprinted index cards for making tasting notes, and the computer remembers (even if the customer forgets!) all the wines that have been sampled on a payment card. There’s also a Wine Club for regulars.
The Wine Times 4 Web site has a useful glossary of wine terms, together with suggestions on food/wine pairings.
Since they opened, Wine Times 4 has attracted a broad clientele. It’s a clever idea, and certainly worth a visit.
