This past Sunday, I visited Heights Chateau to do my wine retail store analysis because I was in the area and it was the closest wine store to me at the time. Heights Chateau is located in Brooklyn Heights on Atlantic Avenue and Henry Street. The location of this wine store plays a huge part in the store’s high volume of customers. In the area, there are surrounding restaurants, shopping, and most importantly, it is just minutes away from the Brooklyn Bridge.
Approaching the wine retail store, I thought they had a pretty inviting exterior – store name displayed largely over the entrance and see through display glass, displaying different arts, books and wine. According to the stores website, loyal customers are drawn in by the store’s classic and simple design of wine and wood and an ever-changing stock of carefully selected wines and spirits from around the world.
When I visited, there were three workers in the shop and one worker who seemed to be quite young offered to help me and has assisted me throughout my analysis. The wines in the shop are arranged by country and region. The first set of wines that I noticed on my right walking in were wines from France and in this section, were subtitles to separate these wines by the regions of France: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Loire Valley, etc. This was one of the store’s attributes; it definitely made finding the wines I intended to find much easier.
Heights Chateau executes free in store wine tastings on Thursday through Sunday evenings from 5- 8:30pm. This wine store does not keep all of their items on the shelf. Any wine over eighty dollars, except for select few wines are in the wine cellar. The wine cellar carries the shop’s most expensive bottles of wine, ranging from $100- $1000 wine bottles, kept at fifty seven degrees. Most other wine stores do not do this. Chateau carries a Wine Cellar List that is kept at the desk counter for anyone interested in expensive wine bottles.
Now this falls in the category of a “red” wine from s region I didn’t know made wine. So I missed the part where it said red wine because I was interested in this white wine but there are red wines displayed in the back. I was unaware of the fact that Israel made wine and Kosher at that. This was my first time hearing of such a thing. Apparently, Kosher wines are only from Israel and should be prayed over by a Rabbi.
One of the store’s weaknesses is not having many descriptions for the wines around the shop as well as not having the pricing up for the display wines for each section.
My store as well did not have many descriptions of the wines, but separating regions of wine is definitely an attribute I would have liked my store to have.
In store tastings are such an important point of service. A great way to draw in students.