McCarthy & Schiering

"Wine merchants can have the reputation of being snobby. We try to break that mold," says owner Dan McCarthy. "Wine is a fun business, we’re fun people and our stores are friendly places."

It was the love of wine that got Dan into the business in the first place. He worked in the wholesale wine industry for G. Raden & Sons for over seven years, starting in sales and becoming the GM at just 28 years of age, overseeing 150 employees. "I was really in over my skill level," he laughs. "I also realized that wine was becoming about boxes and not bottles. I wanted it to be about the wine." In 1980, he and a partner started a wine store called McCarthy & Beck in Ravenna. Although they did fairly well, they realized there was only enough profit to support one of them. Dan kept the store, renamed it McCarthy & Company and ran it for three years.

Photo: Dan McCarthy at the Queen Anne shop

In 1984, Jay Schiering, a long-time customer of Dan’s, joined him as a partner. "Up until that time, I had a company with a partner and was a consulting geologist in the Puget Sound region," says Jay. They talked about ways to capitalize and grow the business and felt that expanding with a second store was the way to reach more people. They brought in a third, silent, partner and in 1990, opened the Queen Anne location. (They just recently bought out the silent partner after the better part of 20 years.) Originally, they were located on Queen Anne Ave N in what is now Portage restaurant. They moved to their current location in 2000 in the same building with A& J Meats and Wild Salmon Seafood.

"I’ve always had the philosophy that you need to study the marketplace and if there are exotic foods available, you’ll have wine clients," explains Dan. The Ravenna location is near the University Village and, at the time, the Safeway had a huge wine selection. What they didn’t offer was information and specialization. When the Queen Anne location opened, the Thriftway (now Metropolitan Market) was a draw, plus they had an empty parking lot next door. "You really need to have parking available near a wine store," says Dan.

Realizing they both liked managing the shop, they decided to each take one location. "Our partnership has been very good," says Dan. "We have two locations each with a different traffic pattern. Queen Anne clients are working professionals who like to travel. They have specific desires and don’t read wine press or pay attention to scores. We have a lot of repeat customers." Jay sees Ravenna’s clients as an interesting cross-section of the area. "We have professionals and business people from the Laurelhurst and Windermere neighborhoods, along with professors from the University of Washington and neighbors from Ravenna. They probably do come in less frequently, but stock up more while there." The sales volume is almost the same for both stores. Their collections reflect their neighborhoods, but Dan and Jay taste a lot of the same wines, from 50-100 weekly. On a recent tasting day, Dan has notes for 56 wines. Their tasting and notes are not only how they collect but are also used to create their common monthly newsletter. In addition, they use the information to decide who they want to have into the stores for Saturday tastings. Winemakers appear in Ravenna on Saturday mornings and in Queen Anne on Saturday afternoons.

Photo above: Jay Schiering in Ravenna

While they "cover the world," they do specialize in Northwest wines, primarily Washington and Oregon. Customers from both stores like to relive their travels through wine. Queen Anne does well with Greek and South African wines. Ravenna sells some South African and a lot of Argentinean Malbec. The stores’ biggest volume sales are from Washington, Oregon, France and Italy.

Dan, Paul Gregutt and Jeff Prather wrote a book in 1996 called "Northwest Wines: A pocket guide to the wines of Washington, Oregon and Idaho." The book was written as the Washington wine market was emerging and brought attention to the stores from national writers. In 1998, Food and Wine magazine recognized McCarthy & Schiering as "retailer of the year." In 2004, GQ magazine named the shops in their list of "50 Best Wine Stores in America" and one of the "top 10 small specialty shops featuring wines from Piedmont and Tuscany." When the book was written, it had 216 entries. Now there are over 700 wineries in Washington and over 400 in Oregon. The number of wineries isn’t the only thing that has changed. "Homogenization of grocery stores has helped smaller wine shops," says Dan. "The large corporations have downsized the wine selections in many of the stores. We basically specialize in special orders. It’s the biggest part of our business. We communicate through email and the website, although we’re really not an online store; we’re true destination stores."

Ravenna (above) 6500 Ravenna Ave NE Seattle, WA 98115 206-524-9500 Queen Anne 2401-B Queen Anne Ave N Seattle, WA 98109 206-282-8500 www.mccarthyandschiering.com

Although success of the stores has to do with "good luck and good contacts," they were also the first people to buy Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignon for retail and very early with Leonetti and Woodward Canyon. They were on top of the Washington wine industry and grew as it caught on nationally.

Dan and Jay have been discussing the future and it looks bright. There’s a lot of room for growth. "European consumption is about 14-17 liters per person per year. American consumption is 6-7 liters per person per year. That’s going up. There’s a new generation of people who have seen wine at the table. My generation saw wine as a special occasion item," says Dan. "The recession has been interesting because wine consumption actually went up, but peoples’ budgets remained the same. So they drank as much, but purchased less expensive wine. We see our future marketing on a one-to-one basis. Clients want us to tell them what’s available and when. We’ll focus our efforts directly on the client, providing special services. We’re updating our systems and have gone on Facebook. We have a depth of product and although we can only rep about 2% on our shelves, we can get just about anything a client wants. We don’t see a consolidation of wineries; people start and keep wineries because they want that lifestyle."

McCarthy and Schiering will continue to offer their personal service, breadth of product and a friendly atmosphere to take it all in. Get to one of the stores soon and start having some fun!

Connie Adams/June 2011

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