This Harlem wine shop is providing greater visibility to Black winemakers.
Married couple Pascal and Daneen Lewis have been co-owners of the Harlem Wine Gallery, a business that’s said to have the largest selection of Black winemakers and wine brands in New York City, NowThis News reports.
The motivation to open a storefront was because they believed it was a necessity for the Harlem neighborhood. They found themselves often having to travel to surrounding areas to purchase wine.
“We’ve lived in the neighborhood for close to 30 years, and we never really found a place that we liked buying wine in,” Daneen told NowThis News. “We would travel downtown and being Harlemites and being very active in the community, we’re like, ‘Wait, why are we leaving our neighborhood to go buy the wine that we wanna drink? We should have a shop. We started learning about wine, taking classes, and then kind of naively just jumped into it. Now, seven years later, here we are and we love every second of it.”
Pascal says the business also addresses another fundamental need, which is to amplify diverse winemakers and educate consumers on various selections available on the market.
“Without prior knowledge of the industry getting into the industry, I found that there was lack of representation within the industry,” Pascal explained to NowThis News. “That is something that I thought needed some help, where I, as a retailer, I could have a space where their wines could be showcased along with all the other wines out there on the market, but actually give them a space and give them a prominent place within a store of this type.”
He added, “We are very selective in who we bring in…So, we try to limit the choices so that we can be able to let the people see what’s available and talk them through it and educate them on who’s making the wine, where the wine’s coming from, and give them some time to actually think, rather than just sort of being overwhelmed by thousands of bottles of wine. Black brands and Black winemakers need an uplift, and we help to provide that uplift.”
