San Francisco's Secret Wine Shop

This retailer has a secret it wants to share. Located in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco,  The Secret Wine Shop is a tasting room, wine shop and art gallery run by Christy Bergman, who is bringing local wineries to San Francisco.

“Most small wineries are great at making wine but don't have the bandwidth for marketing, setting up a tasting room, finding distributors and hiring sales reps,” says Bergman. “That’s where I can help.” Her urban tasting room focuses on local, small-scale production, hand-crafted wines made by the many boutique family-owned wineries in California, who often grow their grapes on historic lands. She offers a carefully selected choice of wines at affordable prices. Mondays from 6 to 9 p.m., Bergman hosts a blind tasting for $10, which includes a flight of these local wines and snacks. She also takes appointments and creates private wine tastings for groups up to 10 people.

Bergman’s wine journey has come full circle. She grew up on a farm in Northern California’s Humboldt County, and moved to Paris years later where she discovered that exceptional wines can be affordable too. Returning to the U.S. after five years abroad, she took winemaking and viticulture classes at the University of California-Davis, and worked at various wineries in Sonoma before starting the Secret Wine Shop. The name is a perfect fit for the venture.

“People have to be adventurous and curious to try new things to come into this neighborhood and ring the buzzer at a warehouse to find this tasting room and wine shop,” Bergman explains. But even more important, she specializes in wines that are a well-kept secret from most urban San Francisco dwellers. “Many of the wines I carry can't be found anywhere else in San Francisco.”

You can order a variety of wines and packages and learn more at thesecretwineshop.com.–Denise Shoukas

Denise Shoukas is a regular foodspring.com contributor
and is the author of foodspring’s food forager blog.

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