Wine Made Simple: The Best Cellars Story
Tuesday, October 23, 11:45-12:30 PM
by Joshua Wesson
Unconventional, yet based on an intuitively obvious idea, Best Cellars revolutionized wine retailing through the creation of a store environment in which novice drinkers felt as comfortable as collectors in making their choices. The founding concept was simple enough: offer a small, but expert selection of wines for everyday drinking, price them affordably and then organize the bottles by taste. The store's genius lay in its rethinking of the entire wine buying experience, beginning with a design where the bottles were incorporated into the architecture, all the way through the whimsical wine descriptions and taste categories' word, color and icon-based visual displays.
What did it take to create, develop and extend this retail experience across brick-and-mortar stores, as well as online? Find out from Joshua Wesson, Best Cellars' CEO. The presentation will be followed by a wine tasting at lunch.
About Joshua Wesson
Once a hugely respected but brutish sommelier who reveled in the extravagance of overpriced pours, Joshua now sips from the cups of carpenters as the Chairman and co-founder of Best Cellars - a chain of value-oriented wine stores where the bottles are arranged by taste and priced mostly for under a sawbuck. With award- winning shops in New York, Massachusetts, Washington DC and Virginia, Best Cellars just might be near enough to visit the next time you're feeling thirsty. If not, you can always drop by via the web at www.bestcellars.com.