New WineStyles Store Opens in St. Louis

Going into a wine store or the spirits section of a supermarket in St. Louis can be a little intimidating. It can seem like you're taking a world tour without the guidebook. There's the section with French wines, next door is Germany, wander south to Italy, Spain and Portugal. Way on the other side are the vintages from Australia, Argentina, and Chile. You're exhausted already and you haven't even got to America yet. You still have to deal with California and what about the great local wines from Missouri? Then there's the price range. There's one from California that sells for $4.99 and another two shelves down going for pretty near $30.

Now there's a new breed of wine store just opened on Clarkson Road in the Chesterfield Oaks shopping center south of Highway 40 that just may help ease the confusion for the novice oenophile:

WineStyles, which has some 1,300 square feet of selling space, is introducing a new way to shop for wine to the St. Louis area. The bottles in the store are arranged by taste and color rather than by region or type of grape. Most of the wine is in the $16-$20 price range, with few bottles being under $10 or over $25. The whites and the reds are separated into three different categories apiece.

The whites are shelved as to whether they are crisp, silky, or rich and the reds fall under the description of fruity, mellow, or bold. There are also separate areas for sweet wines, sparkling wines, and Champagnes, as well as an area for wines priced over $25.

The idea behind the concept is to get wine lovers to try different types of wine that will suit their tastes and not be intimidated by all the varieties they see. Each of the sections in the WineStyles store describes the taste of the wine and which foods would pair best with them. Sometimes two different wines from the same grape might be found in different areas of the store because their characteristics are different.