SARA HOPKINS / SpecialDecatur residents and business partners Deb Lickhalter (left) and Kelly Resignola sit in their new wine bar, Tastings, which opened recently.By JOHN KESSLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/06/2008
At Tastings, patrons virtually serve themselves
The pop of a cork. The scrape of a wine glass across the counter. The great, glorious glug. These sounds are the rituals — some would say the romance — of a wine bar.
Trade it in for the click of a smart card going into a slot. The tap of a button. The pffffft of wine passing through a slim pressurized hose into your glass. Are you ready for wine bar 2.0?
Get ready. Thanks to new technology, the fully automated wine tasting experience is upon us. You need only a rudimentary knowledge of electronic machine operation and a ready palate. An open mind doesn't hurt, either.
At two local wine bars, guests wander the room with a glass and that smart card, which they have pre-loaded with cash. By inserting the card into a reader attached to a wine preservation unit, they can then choose to try any of the wines on display. Not only that, they can select the size of the pour they want — from a sip of an ounce to a full glass. The reader deducts the charge from the card.
The most ambitious such system can be found at Tastings: A Wine Experience in Decatur, the local branch of a small but growing Florida chain. Five separate preservation units — three banked in a line against the wall and two round carousels in the center of the room — hold a total of 72 different wines.
"We already knew about these machines but then met the folks [behind Tastings] at a franchise show," says Kelly Resignola, who owns this location with her partner, Deb Lickhalter. "We really liked the whole package."
The package includes an extensive food menu, a full bar with liquor (served by a bartender) and a retail shop where all the wines are sold by the bottle. Self-serve pours of wine (1.5 ounces, 3 ounces or 6 ounces) run about twice the retail price. But customers can also buy whole bottles and open them on the premises for a $10 corkage fee.
The wine selection, which is determined at the corporate level, offers a broad representation of styles and growing regions.
And prices.
A blended Australian red called Mad Dog & Englishmen ranges in price from $1.90 for a taste to $8.55 for a glass. At the other end, the 2003 Rioja from Remirez de Ganuza costs $10.50 for just a sip and a cool $45 for a glass.
Those expensive open bottles may not move quickly, but they face no danger of oxidation. The Enomatic preservation systems, built in Italy, keep all the open bottles under pressurized, high-purity and wholly inert nitrogen gas. Founded by a winemaker in Tuscany, Enomatic wine systems are now in 65 countries, with more than 1,000 installed in the United States.
While Europeans have taken to the machines, they overwhelmingly eschew the card readers, preferring to let the bartenders do the button pushing.
"In Italy, most of the bars are 200 square feet," says Bernard Lapoire, manager of the company's distribution center in Tucker. "There really isn't room for people to wander around and taste the wines the way they like to do here. The card system is definitely an American thing."
"I've never seen anything like this," marveled Phil Goldstein, a customer trying Tastings for the first time. "I had heard that they [sold wine] by the flight and the half-glass and the glass, but I didn't know it was quite that high-tech."
Still, Goldstein and his wife decided to enjoy a couple of glasses of wine and a cheese plate at a sidewalk table rather than meander around the space trying tastes.
"I think it might get a little frustrating filling my wine that way," he said, adding that he might be more tempted to sample tasting portions if the wine bar offered a famous bottle he had read about.
n that case, he might want to check out Bin 75 wine bar in Alpharetta, which uses a much smaller installation — only 24 bottles — but plays to a more sophisticated crowd.
As the wine bar serves as a tasting room for the adjacent Hinton's Wine Store, the Enomatics are often stocked with famous wines such as Chateau Margaux (a first growth Bordeaux) and Louis Jadot Montrachet (a Grand Cru Burgundy).
"We want people to be able to taste those wines," says manager Keith Lofton, who says the tastes are all priced close to the retail value. Prospective buyers can get a taste before shelling out hundreds of dollars for a bottle.
Lapoire says the Enomatic system is more established on the West Coast and in Las Vegas casinos, where customers seem to have no qualms about sticking money into machines.
In metro Atlanta, the only other installation is at Antica Posta Tuscan restaurant in Buckhead, where the machine has no card reader and stays behind the bar. Owner Marco Betti likes it because it allows him to sell very fine wines by the glass.
He will also, on occasion, invite favorite customers behind the bar to help themselves to a small taste of a great bottle.
And in that moment, the hissing pffffft of pressurized wine hitting the glass sings a strange little song of romance.
Tastings: A Wine Experience
11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Wednesday; 11:30 a.m.-midnight Thursday-Saturday; 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday. 335 W. Ponce de Leon Ave., Decatur. 404-373-3244; awineexperience.com
