Restaurants - 610 Magnolia - August 26, 2006

DRINK; 610 Magnolia offers wines to go

State laws regarding wine sales may still be a Byzantine quagmire, but glimmers of rationality appear occasionally.
Louisville restaurateur Edward Lee is taking advantage of one of those glimmers to make life better for the customers at his Old Louisville restaurant, 610 Magnolia.
Now, if you fall in love with the wine you drink at your meal there, you can buy a bottle to take home.

Benefits to customer and restaurant

This benefits you a couple of ways. First, you'll have access to wines from maybe more obscure wineries than you might have in a liquor store.
Kentucky liquor stores and restaurants are required to obtain their wine through distributors, which receive it from the wineries. Distributors often prefer to deal in high volume — small-production wineries or tightly allocated wines may not appeal to them.
"I got a little frustrated at what's available through distributors," said Lee, whose retail liquor license was granted in May, allowing him to sell wine by the bottle for you to carry out of the restaurant.
Offering wines from small-growth vineyards is just "part of the growth and expansion of the food and wine scene in Louisville," he said. Many of his customers are eager to taste beyond the big producers. "Anybody can get Mondavi," he said. "It's fun to taste these more obscure wines."
At 610, Lee can order wine directly from the winery and sell it to customers. So if you enjoy your meal with a bottle of pinot noir from Orogeny vineyards in Sonoma County and love the flavor that comes from its hand-tended acreage in Green Valley, you can buy a bottle to take home.

The second benefit: You'll pay liquor store prices — about $21 for that Orogeny pinot. Typically, the lowest price you'll pay for a bottle of wine in a restaurant is twice what you'd pay in a liquor store.
Technically, you can order a bottle of wine at any restaurant, taste it, stick the cork back in and take it home. But you're paying a premium. At 610, about 80 percent of the wines on the wine list are available at liquor store prices.
But Lee cautions that the restaurant is not a liquor store. "We're not in the business of selling vodka," said Lee. "We're trying to do something very specific, supplying very nice wine to people at very nice prices."
610 Magnolia's ability to serve liquor in the restaurant comes from something called a "retail liquor drink" license, which, these days, can be augmented by something called a "retail liquor package" license. Having both of these licenses allows the restaurant to both serve drinks and sell wine.

In contrast, most restaurants in the area hold a "restaurant liquor drink" license that requires the restaurant to obtain half of its income from food in order to sell liquor. This restaurant license is deemed "incompatible" (by state law) with retail sales of wine, so 610's system probably won't be used widely. But it allows Lee to speculate a little bit about the restaurant's future.

But for now....

"One of the things we would love to start doing is accommodate small, informal groups that want to learn about wines," said Lee.
But for now, perhaps just a bottle of Paul Goerg brut Champagne, to go.

Reporter Sarah Fritschner, Courier Journal, can be reached at (502) 582-4203.

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