Wayne Laing vows to "upscale" Hampden. The longtime wine merchant and former owner of The Wine Underground store is spending about $360,000 to open a wine bar on The Avenue, within hailing distance of the neighborhood bar Zissimo's.

"I feel as though I'm going to change the environment," declared Laing, 39, who sold The Wine Underground last year. "My philosophy is, if you build it, they will come."

The bar will be called "13.5% Wine Bar," a reference, Laing said, to the average alcohol content of a balanced wine. Although the wine bar will be upscale, pricing of wines will be downscale, with an eye toward the economy. The emphasis will be on "value" wines that taste as good as more popular and costlier wines in their class, he said.

"There are a tremendous amount of wines out there that drink like a $15 bottle, but don't cost $15," he said.

The advent of a wine bar -- Laing said it will open in about four months -- is another sign that the once strictly blue-collar community is evolving as a magnet for boutiques and artists.

But it's also a sign of what he thinks is the future of his industry -- combination wine bar stores.

Tasting success

Laing said the best way wine sellers can attract customers is to hold wine tastings in their stores, and he was known for holding tastings at The Wine Underground, located on Evans Chapel Road on the Hampden-Roland Park line.

But Laing said Baltimore City liquor laws limit the number of tastings in wine stores to 12 a year, and his old store wasn't big enough to accommodate what he really wanted -- a wine bar, where he could sell wine by the glass as well as by the bottle.

He sold the business in October 2008, but still owns the building and lives upstairs. Now, he has a full beer, wine and liquor license in hand for the new establishment, and said wine will account for about 90 percent of his business.

Laing plans to open in the former Craig Flinner art gallery and framing shop at 1117 W. 36th St., next to the Mud and Metal boutique and two doors down from Golden West Cafe.

He doesn't expect any nearby competition; although there are nine wine stores in the area, there's only one wine bar, Grand Cru, in the Belvedere Square shopping center.

"And it does phenomenal business," he said.

"I think the future is in the megastore," Laing said. "The future is being able to taste wine at a particular location. You have to work twice as hard to be a wine store."

Nelson Carey, co-owner of Grand Cru and former owner of The Old Vine wine store in Mt. Washington, said there are advantages to both wine bars and wine retail stores.

A wine bar offers customers the chance to "try before they buy," without merchants' being required to obtain tasting permits and being limited to how many tastings they can have in a year, Carey said. "We can sell wine for consumption 365 days a year," he said, adding that many customers buy a bottle of wine there after drinking a glass of it and liking it. The wine bar also sells beer and liquor.

But retail stores have advantages too, including lower overhead and labor costs, and the ability to stock larger inventory, he said. State law allows retail stores to be as big as 10,000 square feet.

A wine retail store is inherently "a more efficient business" than a wine bar, he said.

Carey said he doesn't necessarily see wine bars as the future of the wine market, but he said there's definitely a future in wine bars.

"It's doing very, very well," even in a weak economy, he said of Grand Cru. "In tough times, people like to socialize," he said. "What better way to do that than over a glass of wine?"

Catching on

David Wells, owner of The Wine Source in Hampden, believes so strongly in tastings as a way to promote his retail store that he bought a tavern license that allows him to sell wine for consumption as often as he wants in the store.

Wells holds three to four wine tastings a week for his customers and promotes them heavily on his Web site.

"It takes the risk out of buying" for customers, he said.

Wells hopes to open a wine bar in the store at Elm Avenue and 36th Street. He said he owns the building, which is big enough for a bar, but doesn't want to open one in a bad economy, he said.

Wells said the wine bar concept has been slow to catch on in Baltimore since the first one opened at the Chesapeake Wine Company in Canton in the late 1990s. But now it appears to be taking hold with Grand Gru, Chesapeake, Metropolitan Wine Bar and Grill in Federal Hill, and soon 13.5% in Hampden.

"I go to the wine bars around town, and if Wayne gets his off the ground, I'm sure I'll be going there too," Wells said.

Wells, whose Wine Source used to be located in the struggling Rotunda, predicts that if the mall is redeveloped as planned, a wine bar or wine-themed restaurant will almost certainly open there, too.

The success of wine bars and stores "speaks volumes (about) the health of the wine business in Baltimore," Wells said.

Redefining a bar

The hardest work for Laing may be in getting Hampden to embrace a wine bar. So far, there has been none of the controversy that has followed unrelated attempts by Kay Lee and Vincent Fox to open a wine store at 4001 Falls Road.

They promoted the business as a wine and cheese store, but have refused to promise to limit the kinds of alcohol they would serve, leading the Hampden Community Council to oppose the transfer of a liquor license for the store, said Everett Noe, president of the community council.

The council has taken no such stand against the planned wine bar.

Laing said his markup will be far below many restaurants, which make their money from a diner's first glass of wine. His prices per glass will be $6 to $7 compared to $10 at the average restaurant, he said.

In addition, customers at the wine bar will be able to choose a bottle from a 20-foot wall of wine for a nominal corkage fee, Laing said.

"I'm going to change the attitude of the Avenue," he said.

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user comments (1)

user says...

I have shopped at Wine Underground for many years and am very excited to hear that Wayne's project is finally coming to fruition. I actually drove by the site today before I read this and wondered what was happening with that storefront! I wish him well and will most certainly be a happy patron of 13.5%. He has great taste in wine. Oh, and there is one other new wine bar you didn't mention, V-NO, on S. Ann Street in Fells Point. V-NO opened last September.

Posted 5:16 PM, 04.23.09

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