End of an Era: Vino Wine Shop Sold after 25 Years

The following popped into my e-mail in-box and, with his usual tell-it-like-it-is directness, Bruce Bauer—longtime readers know him as my (much) younger brother—made the big announcement:

"This is a tough email to start so I’m jumping in the deep end and letting you know that after an incredibly rewarding, at times frustrating, yet so f*cking fulfilling 25 year run here at the wine shack I’m going to be selling VINO and retiring (apparently I’m older than I think I am 😬). I've gotta admit I'm feeling a bit out of my element with the impending change, but also excited in so many ways. Now I hear y’all going, “But what about us?,” and I just want you to know I’ve found a great buyer, someone I’ve known for years in the business, who couldn’t be more perfect to take over and take VINO to the next level."

Why am I posting about my brother's wine shop on this blog that's about local food, you might ask?

Well, without his inspiration I might well have never started Good Stuff NW, much less become a writer. You see, I was a freelance advertising art director at the time, helping clients with their branding and marketing and just dipping my toe into this new medium called the World Wide Web. It was 2006 and my baby brother was on a whirlwind tour of France and Spain, writing about all the amazing food and drink he was stumbling across via a platform called Blogger. Needless to say, his always-engaging writing was a draw, of course, but so was the idea of this easy-to-use new medium. (You can read more about my writing journey here.)

But back to Vino.

He'd always been a crazy smart kid who had an uncanny knack for relating to all kinds of people—I've consistently said he got all the "nice" genes in the family—so when he started a career as a lumber broker I thought, "Good for him, he'll make lots of money and be secure," while the big sister part of me was thinking, "He's so much more talented and creative…I hope he's happy."

Fortunately that only lasted a few years, whereupon he co-founded Shakers Café in the the early 90s in the nascent, not-yet-named Pearl District in Northwest Portland. Smashingly successful with lines out the door for breakfast and lunch—its tagline "If Your Mother Could Cook" perfectly summed up its take on homemade classics—he also began broadly exploring what would become his passion for lesser-known European, American and, particularly, Northwest wines.

He eventually sold the café, launching his first wine shop on Southeast Hawthorne called Portland Wine Merchants, which was followed not much later with the opening of County Cork, an Irish-themed pub on Hawthorne—coincidentally (and somewhat spookily) also the site of our paternal grandfather's moving business back in the 1930s—which eventually relocated to Northeast Fremont.

Bruce sold the Hawthorne wine shop to his business partner and opened Vino in the Sellwood neighborhood, which just before the turn of the millenium was a quiet street populated by antique stores and not much street traffic. He quickly drew in a crowd of regulars, fans from his Hawthorne shop as well as appreciative neighborhood folk drawn to his affordable selection, extensive knowledge and lack of pretense on the subject, who were very excited to have a place to gather on Fridays for wine tastings.

The move to its current location on Northeast 28th wasn't without some fraught moments—moving to a promising new neighborhood but leaving the community that had built up around the shop was not easy—but it proved to be both timely and prescient. The street soon exploded with notable small restaurants, bars, a food cart pod and many small businesses, with Vino benefitting from the increased street traffic as well as the new outdoor courtyard for tastings.

As Bruce wrote in wrapping up his e-mail, "It’s been amazing and I can’t say strongly enough how much better my life has been because of you guys and what you helped VINO become. Thank you for coming along for the ride!"

Photo of yours truly at a Vino wine tasting many moons ago courtesy Laurie Harquail.