If you have an interest in learning about wine but don’t know where to start, Riverside resident Kristie Wagner’s forthcoming store, Vinette, may be right up your alley.
The boutique wine shop is planned to open in December in the commercial space within Riverside’s train station, which has been vacant since bike repair store Gears2You moved to Brookfield earlier this year.
“We all know that Stag’s Leap Napa [cabernet] is amazing and delicious. They deserve every accolade they have because it’s amazing. That said, for a third of the price, sometimes even less, you can find an outstanding wine from Italy or France or Spain that does all the same kind of things but with sustainable farming, organic grapes and a new experience altogether,” Wagner told the Landmark. “I want to demystify international wines and allow people to have space to discover new wines. I find it fascinating myself, so if I think it’s great, I’m hoping that other people do, too.”
Riverside’s village board on Sept. 18 approved a three-year lease with Wagner for the commercial space that is set to end Sept. 17, 2028, with a fixed monthly rent of $500 for the first two years and $750 for the third year.
Wagner said her interest in wine first developed when she studied abroad in Spain while attending college at the University of New Hampshire. From then on, she said, “the bug” has driven her to seek out new kinds of wine as she’s been able to travel elsewhere in Europe.
Several years ago, she said her husband bought her a “day with a sommelier” as a birthday present while they were staying in Italy, which pushed her interest even further.
“We walked the winery. I met the wine maker … I learned the difference of the Syrah versus the cabernet leaves and how to tell the vines apart, and I was truly fascinated,” she said, referencing two varieties of red wine grapes.
Then, after a long day of tasting wines, she said, the professionals tested her ability to match five of them to their labels based on smell alone.
“I smelled them all, and I was like, ‘OK, these are them.’ She goes, ‘Seriously, Kristie? No further. You got it. You should be a sommelier,’ and that literally stuck with me,” she said. “In January 2020, I became a sommelier. It was all for personal exploration. It had nothing to do with the job. It was truly meant [to be], because I was fascinated by it.”
Wagner said she’s combining that natural interest with her entrepreneurial expertise.
“I have opened 20 stories in my time. One for myself, which was a paper boutique, and 19 of them for a children’s clothing brand around the country, in addition to some things way back when I was very young, helping out companies. But this one is my own, and this is number 21, and it’s everything for me,” she said. “All of that experience of building out places — which I never even knew how to do, I just learned on the job — and combining that with my hobby, I feel like that is the perfect combination of a career. When you turn what you do every day for a job into something for yourself and combine it with a passion, it’s like a home run for me.”
While the store will bring each of those elements from her past together, Wagner said she’s most looking forward to the day-to-day work of helping people find new wines to enjoy.
“It’s my favorite thing to do anyway. With my friends, with people I meet, it’s my favorite thing to do, and I love the idea that I can have a space where people can come and do that for themselves,” she said. “That’s the motivation behind opening Vinette. It’s the purpose of Vinette, to create a comfortable, warm space for people to come together as a community and discover wine.”
