Wine Enthusiast’s First Ever Retail Store Debuts in SoHo

What to get the neighborhood that has everything? SoHo already featured a slime-themed kids’ center, a store specializing in retro soccer jerseys, and countless luxury marijuana dispensaries. Now, after the opening of Wine Enthusiast NYC on Nov. 7, it has a “wine lifestyle” shop.

Not only is this type of shop new to SoHo, but it is Wine Enthusiast’s first brick-and-mortar store after 45 years as a magazine and business. “We felt like customers really needed to see and touch our products,” said the president of Wine Enthusiast’s commerce department, Erika Strum Silberstein.

Located at 27 Greene St., the store is long and narrow. It features soft lighting and a color palette of beige, dark green, and salmon, which works surprisingly well to create a homey feeling inside.

Wine Enthusiast NYC sells every kind of wine-related product imaginable. There are decanters, bottle-shaped Christmas ornaments, tasting kits, travel bags designed to hold wine, and even wine “essences” to train your nose. While they don’t actually sell wine, samples are offered to customers interested in purchasing one of their many wineglasses. “This is the only place in the world where you can try a glass before you buy,” Silberstein said. “That’s important to us, because our glassware is at a premium price point. It illustrates why you’d want to spend $40 on a glass versus $10.” The wineglasses are indeed both elegant and sturdy; a large graphic on the wall explains the benefits of each style.

The store’s most lavish pieces are the wine fridges, wine cellars, and furniture (featuring built-in wine storage) that line the walls. These items are both impressive and pricey, ranging from a few hundred dollars to over $5,000. Some of the top-end fridges and cellars emit Wi-Fi. While some can feel indulgent for a city where so many people live in small apartments, Silberstein said they’ve been selling well. “I’ve been surprised at how many big wine fridges people have come in to buy,” she said.

Silberstein’s parents, Adam and Sybil Strum, founded Wine Enthusiast in 1979. (A few family pictures can be found on the store walls.) She herself has been working at the company for almost 20 years, steadily rising through the ranks.

While wine is a quintessentially upscale interest, Silberstein wants the new store to be a broad tent. She called Wine Enthusiast “anti-snobby,” and said one of her aims in opening a brick-and-mortar location was to make wine more approachable to locals and tourists. “We want people to hang out and spend time here,” she said. “We’re already a niche, so we don’t want to be exclusionary in any way.”

Recent economic tariffs levied by President Trump, including a 15 percent tariff on European wine imports, have caused prices to rise across the industry. (While Wine Enthusiast doesn’t manufacture wine itself, many of their products are produced overseas.) But Silberstein said Wine Enthusiast was doing well considering the circumstances. The company, indeed, saw growth of 3 percent last year.

“We’ve seen where we can absorb cost increases and maintain prices where they are, and we’ve seen some places where we need to increase prices in order to keep our margins,” Silberstein said. “People are still drinking a lot of wine.”

A good glass of red, white, or rosé, after all, is something that can take you away from earthly worries like the economy.

“The more people drink wine, the better it is for us as a business, and the better it is for people,” Silberstein said. “Maybe that’s a big statement to make, but I think it creates beautiful social moments.”