Southside Cellars was a local wine store owned by Linda and Tom Blakely. We believe that in an age of big-box retailers there is still a place for the level of quality, selection and service that can only be provided by a small retailer. Sadly, we were proven wrong.

We think that wine is all about fun. Wine is an indulgence, like chocolate or cheesecake, and should bring something special into your life. We hand selected each wine in the store to find the best wines and the best values. In fact, we tasted most of the wines we sold before we bought them! It was our goal to make sure that our wines brought joy and celebration to you and yours.

At our wine tastings, we did our best to make people feel at home and relaxed. We always used real wine glasses for our tastings, because we know that it makes a difference. We always served cheese and home made bread (really home made: Tom made it at the store!) because we knew that wine and food are inseparable. All we asked was that you bring the spirit of adventure and a willingness to explore!

When you asked us for a recommendation, you got our honest opinion. We tried to determine as much as we could about your tastes and preferences before making a recommendation, and we'd let you try anything that we had open at the time. We never recommended a wine just because we happened to have a lot of it, and we never, ever tried to steer you from a "sale" wine towards a wine with a higher profit margin. We honestly considered customer satisfaction more important that "making a sale."

We did recognize that everyone appreciates a discount. Every day we offered a 10% discount on full case purchases, and members of any of our wine clubs got additional discounts. We ran specials now and again, too. Whenever we got a "deal" from our suppliers, we'd pass it along to our customers. To find out about any specials, all you had to do was subscribe to our email newsletter, or read it on-line on our Web page.

Wine is not about being snooty or snobbish. It's not about "my wine is rated better than yours" and it's definitely not about "my wine cost more that yours." There are plenty of wine dealers that will play that game if you want to. Our goal was to make sure that you actually enjoyed drinking the wines you buy from us. Nothing else really mattered.

Because we owned the store, you never had to ask to see the manager. We'd either satisfy you completely, or tell you honestly why we couldn't. If you ever had a problem, Tom's cell phone number was on the web site, and he actually answered it. That was the level of personal service that we provided: no layers of management, no layers of bureaucracy, no waiting until someone empowered to actually take action is available.

So what happened? A large corporate retailer moved to Jacksonville, just a few miles from our store. The week they opened, our business dropped 40%, and it never recovered. We gave it a year to see if the novelty would wear off. We heard stories of people carrying out cases of wine from that store, as we sat in our store with no customers. We saw their full page ads in Folio and the Times-Union with absurdly low prices on wines that, for the most part, we didn't sell. Wines that, honestly, you can get at Publix or Winn Dixie.

We never carried those mass market wines because we knew that there were great wines from small producers that real wine lovers would take to their hearts. We found those wines, we promoted those wines, and, until the new guys came to town, we did a good job selling those wines. Apparently, however, many of our customers decided that buying wine from a corporation in a warehouse-like store was better than supporting a locally owned, service oriented wine store.

Not all of our customers, though. A significant number of you (you know who you are) stuck with us until the end. We appreciate you more than you will ever know. There just weren't enough of you to keep us going. So on June 30, 2007 we closed the doors for good. It's been an education, we've made some great friends, and we drank a hell of a lot of wonderful wine. We wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Sincerely,
Tom & Linda Blakely

Linda Blakely
lmb at thecellarsgroup.com

Tom Blakely
tfb at thecellarsgroup.com