How luxury wine shop Wine Story came to be
Wine can be associated with a certain time, place, or memory. The thing about good food or great wine is that they are woven into our life experiences. The taste, the bouquet, the company, and the discussions become something bigger, so big that they turn into stories. This is what Wine Story, a business that offers the finest wine from all over France, stands for.
Adding another chapter to its ongoing tale, Wine Story has recently launched a new branch at the ground floor of One Uptown Residence, 36th Street, Bonifacio Global City. The event was commemorated with an intimate tour headed by its founder and a gustatory experience prepared by Chef
Not only did we get to go around the store, but we also learned more about the complexities of wine and the chronicle of how the shop was born.
People usually discover wine through their palate, but Romy fell madly in love with vino because of the story behind each bottle. In March 2009, while on his annual trip to Anaheim, California for Healthy Options, he saw a book called Billionaire’s Vinegar at Barnes & Noble in Newport Beach.
Margarita Forés. Romy Sia
Romy shares that he has never had any interest in wine until he read the book. “Even if you don’t care much about wine, this book will captivate you as it did me,” he says. “It’s a true story about a bottle of the 1787 Château Lafite Rothschild—supposedly owned by the third US President and world’s first wine connoisseur
was discovered in a Paris cellar some two hundred years later. It was bought at a London auction by the owner of Forbes magazine,
for $156,000, which in 1985 was the highest price ever paid for a bottle of wine. The book reads like a fast-paced mystery thriller, which I finished reading in just two days. More than just a bottle of alcohol, as I discovered, each wine has a story.” A year later, he established Wine Story at Shangri-La Plaza, Ortigas.
“I really didn’t want it to look like a supermarket, where you just have rows and rows of wine,” says Romy, explainingthe concept behind this pursuit of his. “I wanted to sell wine more like luxury brands, like Chanel or Louis Vuitton, where they display the products like jewels. This is what I have
Jefferson—that Malcolm Forbes, Thomas
done.” The wines glow like precious gems, as they are stored in a temperature-controlled, well-lit, all-glass cellar found in the center of the store.
Proudly, Romy also tells of the time some Bordeaux wine owners and makers visited the establishment and exclaimed, “C’est magnifique!” They have never seen anything quite like the setup. Designed by a Paris-based architect, Wine Story Uptown brings Bordeaux, its vineyard, chateau, and cellar to Manila. The idea is to give an immersive experience of learning, discovering, and enjoying the best wine of the French wine hub together with Champagne and Burgundy.
Inside the store awaits friendly and knowledgeable WSET (Wine & Spirit Education Trust) certified staff, whom Romy calls the “Wine Angels,” guaranteeing top-of-the-line customer service.
More than the ambiance, the store design, and even the presence of the Wine Angels, the shop prides itself on its provenance, storage conditions, mature vintages, and large formats. Wine Story gets its wines directly from Bordeaux chateaux and other reputable wine merchants in London. It does not buy from third parties or private collectors, which assures authenticity. From the moment the vinos leave the wine region to the time they are received and displayed in the stores, the temperature is kept strictly between 14 and 18 Celsius to maintain quality.
Beyond all that, the widest and best selections of mature vintages 20 years and older, and large format bottles from 1.5-liter to 18-liter bottles that cannot be found anywhere else, rest on its shelves. winestory.com.ph | @winestoryph
‘The book reads like a fast-paced mystery thriller, which I finished reading in just two days. More than just a bottle of alcohol, as I discovered, each wine is a story.’