Versi Vino opened its doors in July 2020, and it’s been shaking up the South Jersey wine scene ever since. Located in Maple Shade, the concept combines a wine bar, bottle shop and bistro under one roof. The experience is curated under the watchful eye of Christine Zubris, a longtime wine enthusiast who turned her passion into a new profession after years of working in the technology sector. With a rotating wine list, a focus on education and a refreshingly laid-back environment, Christine’s concept has attracted aficionados and the uninitiated alike.
Christine’s concept is built around exploration. The wines offered at Versi Vino are available by the taste, half-glass, full glass or bottle, and everything served in their restaurant is also offered for retail sale. The knowledgeable staff are always ready with recommendations and suggestions for flights based on individual taste profiles.
Christine graciously made some time to speak with me recently about how she fell in love with wine, the challenges and unexpected upsides of opening a business during the pandemic, and her ultimate long-term goals for the Versi Vino experience. We also talked desert-island wines, favorite grapes and how to approach the holiday wine selection. Some responses have been condensed and lightly edited.
Can I ask you first to tell me a little about how wine came into your life?
Sure. About fifteen years ago, I started drinking wine. I would say that my first interest was in sweet wines, because that’s what everyone around me was drinking. So, Moscato from California—not even the good stuff from Italy. I started to then go into wine shops and try to figure out why was it that I liked what I liked. I started to pick other sweet wines that were from more special places—for example, from Asti in Italy. And again, I began to realize how wines had a really special sense to them. You didn’t have to buy what everybody else was drinking. So from there I started to study, because I wanted to know why that was. I purchased my first wine book, which was the Windows on the World Complete Wine Course by Kevin Zraly. That’s really where I caught the wine bug.
So when did it go from that to being in the wine trade? Did you work in restaurants, bartend, work in tasting rooms?
Never. I haven’t worked in a single restaurant ever in my life. In college, I studied chemistry and after that, I worked for a scientific software company for about fifteen years. I was really tired of corporate life, and I wanted to work in the wine industry. I wanted to follow my passion and my love of wine. I hopped over to the other side directly by opening a wine bar and restaurant.
What’s your history with South Jersey? What drew you to open a wine bar here?
I moved to South Jersey in 2013, but just from North Jersey. So I’m a Jersey girl. I was born in Brooklyn, but we moved to Jersey when I was a kid. My husband and I moved to the farmland of northern Burlington County, and we love our lives down here. When we were looking for a spot for Versi Vino, what I had to do was draw a circle around where we live, because I didn’t want to have to drive more than twentyish miles from my town. The thing about New Jersey is that liquor licenses are pretty expensive, and there’s just not enough of them—so you kind of have to go where there’s an available license. That’s what brought me down to Maple Shade, because there was a license that was available and affordable. For me, I also wanted to make sure we were able to find a spot that was on a major road. I didn’t want to be tucked away too far because I felt that Versi Vino, in its novel concept, needed to have some good daily traffic.
Tell me how you came up with this novel concept, to use your term.
Ten years ago, my husband and I were in Italy, and we saw these really fantastic wine dispensing machines in Greve in Chianti, the Tuscan region of Greve. We went to an enoteca where you’d put some money on a card, and we were just set loose and allowed to taste all these different wines. I fell in love, and I wanted to know why these weren’t in the U.S. There were no wine bars or any businesses that had them. Then over the last ten years we started to see wine bars pop up in different regions—Phoenix, South Carolina, Florida—and wanted to understand why there were none in New Jersey. We figured out they’re legal, you could use them, and they’re pretty smart—they’ll cut you off when you reach a certain level. That’s when we started to come up with the idea: How could we use these machines to change the wine-drinking experience? We know there are things we really don’t like about dining out and drinking. I don’t like most wine lists because they’re too big.
Right—and they’re not customer friendly unless you know what you’re looking for. So you end up looking by price, or by what you’ve heard of before.
And if that’s not on the list, you’re out of luck. We wanted to change the way wine was experienced at the restaurant level, but also at the retail level. Because you have the same issue when you go to a liquor store. There’s 400 Chardonnays—how do you pick the right one out of 400? You either pick the brand you know of, or you just pick the cheapest, and you hope and pray when you pull the bottle off the shelf. And maybe there’s someone at that liquor store who can help you, but that can also be a little intimidating. There’s over 65,000 different SKUs of wine available for sale in New Jersey alone. How are you able to find wines without buying a full bottle, opening it and figuring out you don’t like it? You can’t do that for 60,000 items, but we tried to have that mentality—giving people the opportunity to try wine before they commit to a full glass, or to a bottle they can drink here with dinner or take home with them.
You do have a very manageable and balanced list. How do you go about curating that?
Our list changes every 60 days. We try to give something that is classic alongside something that’s a little more esoteric. Maybe it’s from a region you’ve never heard of, but it’s the same grape that you know. Or the region is familiar, but the grape isn’t. We try to give people the ability to explore, but if you need that comfort level of a Cabernet or a Merlot, we’ll have that on our list too.
What is the selection process like?
When we first started, I reached out to a bunch of different distributors whose wine portfolios I liked. In the U.S., we have a three-tier system: You have the producer, the distributor and the retailer. I always knew from the start that I didn’t want to work with a lot of distributors, only for the fact that it’s hard to maintain all those relationships—and it’s hard to write all those checks. I’m always looking for distributors who are easy to buy from, who are consistent. As I mentioned, the list changes every 60 days. So every 60 days, I come up with a new Excel file that I send to all my distributors, which gives them the results of the prior 60 days, so they can see which wines were successful. They can take that back to their manager or boss, or they can use the information to sell elsewhere based on what was successful at Versi Vino. It also helps them know what I’m looking for. It’s never a specific wine—I never say, “I want this wine from this producer.” They have some liberty in thinking through the wines. If I’m looking for a Chablis under $20, for example, they’ll look at what’s in their portfolio and they bring it to my attention. They bring the wines, I taste through them, the staff taste them, and we pick what works. I also always have a backup list, which I call my “bench.” These are the wines I really like, but they just didn’t fit this list, or they fit the category but I went with something else.
I’d like to pivot a little bit and ask you about the process of getting Versi Vino off the ground. You opened your doors at the height of the pandemic last year, and I’m sure that wasn’t easy. What was the experience like in those early months?
It was a blessing and a curse. I’ve tried to see the positives even though there were so many negatives to opening during the pandemic. When I first purchased my liquor license and signed my lease, it was November 2019. We started construction in December 2019—all pre-Covid. January came and this thing was happening in China, and it spread to Italy, where our machines were being made. I’ll never forget the Friday night when it was announced we were stopping trade with Italy. I almost had a heart attack, because I was waiting for my wine machines to get on a ship and take their journey to the United States. There were so many things that were uncertain, so many things that were unavailable. The buildout was delayed, and our opening was delayed. I can’t tell you how frantic I was when I thought we’d be opening in the middle of March, just as the world was closing. On top of everything else, our façade sign was delayed. I remember saying, “I need this sign by the end of April, because we’re going to have this grand opening.” Of course, none of that happened.
So you were in a situation that was essentially frozen—how did you continue planning and preparing when everything was so uncertain?
I hired my first staff, and we got together for training on the 26th of June, I believe. We were opening on July 1. We all got together, we were here training, and the next day was when they stopped indoor dining again because cases were rising. No dining means no wine, no pouring. We were the saddest wine shop, with our beautiful machines sitting idle. But we opened, and Labor Day weekend was when the Governor allowed for indoor dining. But we were only allowed to have twelve guests at one time. Just to give you an idea, that’s three tables of four people—it’s really hard to run a business when you can only serve three tables at a time. But September 13 was the day we opened our doors again, as a restaurant. We just kept trucking on.
And now it’s more than a year beyond that. Do you ever look back on that time and wonder how you made it through?
I feel like I don’t take enough time to sit back and say, wow, look at this. It’s incredible. We’ve been so busy that we haven’t really had that opportunity to appreciate where we were, where we’ve been.
It seems like your concept is fully in swing now.
It’s almost there. It’s almost 100%. The one thing we’re missing is guest use of the machines. We’ve had to be really flexible with the way we launched the business, so we ended up launching in a full-service capacity, where the servers bring the wine to you, pour the wine for you. We don’t want any sort of conflict between guests and servers who are trying to also pour wine from the same machines. We’re trying to figure out how to layer that in. Since we truly do operate as a restaurant, there will be a learning curve to understanding how we do that.
Last broad question: How have you seen the following develop here at Versi Vino? What have you learned from it?
I think what we try to do is create a really great experience for guests. The best feeling we get is when a guest comes in and they’re so excited about having brunch, or just coming in mid-day for some charcuterie and wine, or they come in for dinner and they’re really thrilled when they walk through the door. We want our guests to feel that way whether it’s their first time or their fifth time. We really wanted to embrace making sure people feel welcome, and we know that when people see our menus, it can initially feel a little overwhelming. But after your first flight comes out, you’re like, I got this! We want people to keep drinking wines, trying new things and loving the experience. We take pride in making sure that people enjoy their experience here.
Lightning Round
Favorite grape?
This is going to sound terrible because I own a wine bar! Chardonnay. 100%. Love it in blends, love it in sparkling, love it in still, love it in steel, love it in oak. Love everything about what you can do with it.
Favorite region?
Piedmont, hands down. They grow a little bit of Chardonnay too.
Do you have a desert island bottle of wine?
On the red side, I’m a big Pinot Noir drinker. I’ll drink it from Burgundy—and I’m talking within budget—so I’d either go with just a classic Burgundy from the general Bourgogne appellation. But if I had a few extra bucks, I’d go with maybe something a little more special, like a Volnay or a Pommard. But my favorite of all time is Occidental Pinot Noir. I have a bunch of that in my cellar that I’m hanging on to. I think Steve Kistler is a genius winemaker.
Lastly, since it’s coming up: What wines will be on your Thanksgiving table?
I host Thanksgiving, so it’s important for me to have great wines. I will definitely have Burgundy. I’ll pull some Chateau de Laborde from here. We currently don’t have a dry Riesling on our list, but I’d probably go to the store a pick and Alsatian Riesling, something a little higher quality. I also love a good, make-it-yourself cocktail as well. We’re going to have some kind of apple cider sangria on the table. And for sangria, always use the cheapest wine you can get. You don’t have to buy it from Versi Vino! I might also splurge and bring home some Gamay as well.
Thank you, Christine, for taking the time to speak with Vin de Jerz! Versi Vino is located at 461 Route 38 W in Maple Shade, NJ. For menus, hours and more, visit versivino.com.
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