Black & Woman Owned Wine Store From Boston Opens New Location in the Nation’s Capital

At the end of January, The Urban Grape , a famous wine shop in Boston, made its way to a second location in Washington, D.C. The organization has been a major player in the Boston wine scene for the past 13 years. Now they have hopes of building community in DC, one bottle at a time.

The Progressive Scale

The most unique thing about The Urban Grape is that wines are not organized by country or even by grape. Wines are organized using The Progressive Scale, a proprietary measurement system developed by TJ and Hadley Douglas, the owners of the shop.

The shop measures the body of the wine on a scale from 1-10 (body is generally defined as the weight of the wine on the palate). The scale then adds an “R” for red wines and “W” for white wines. For example, a wine that is a “5R” is a red wine that is right in the middle in terms of body. Then, the shop organizes wines vertically by price, with the cheapest bottles on the bottom and the most expensive wines at the top. This creates a matrix, where the most expensive and heaviest bottles are on the top right, and the least expensive, lightest bottles are on the bottom left.

It’s an ingenious way to organize a shop, and one that makes it easy for consumers to find the wines they like, along with similar bottles right next to it.

Building Community in D.C.

The other thing that is magical about The Urban Grape is how they are bringing the community along with them. When you first enter the space you see a large, long table, built by Sandtown Furniture in Baltimore, Maryland. As you pass the table, you go through a door into an event space, where there are already plans to hold events with local businesses, catered by local companies. The company is clearly focused on becoming a part of the community, rather than pushing their way into the city.

“ Washington, D.C. is the ideal place for The Urban Grape to grow and continue our work of building community through beverage ,” said TJ Douglas, founder and CEO of Drink Progressively Group, the parent company of The Urban Grape. “ We immediately fell in love with the history and personality of Shaw [the neighborhood] and are looking forward to being a gathering spot for locals and visitors .”

And once the grand opening took place, you could really get a sense of how TJ and Hadley built community before, and how they plan to do it now.

The Grand Opening

When you first walk in, that table from Sandtown was full of winemakers who drove out to be a part of The Urban Grape’s special day. The event include Boyd Cru Wines, Maryland’s first black-owned winery and Ward Four Wines founder Justin Trabue (Ward Four is named for the “ward” or zone in DC where Justin’s grandmother lived). At the end of the table was Ingrid Best, founder of IBest Wines.

Walking into the event space, were DMV Brand managers for Uncle Nearest Whiskey (not the Department of Motor Vehicles, DMV stands for DC, Maryland and Virginia) and LS Cream Liqueur’s founder Myriam Jean-Baptiste.

Finally when you head to the main area of the wine shop, you were immediately stopped by a long line that led to La Fete Wine Company founder Donae Burston. La Fete is a pillar within the black wine community and Burston grew up in Baltimore.

Throughout the evening, winemaker after winemaker credited TJ and Hadley for helping to grow their business. For some, such as Jean-Baptiste and Ingrid Best, The Urban Grape was the first wine shop to carry their product.

Leaving the event, the energy, passion and affinity for what The Urban Grape means to the producers, was palpable throughout the night.

And that was just the beginning.

What’s next for The Urban Grape

With the opening out of the way, the wine shop has big plans to continue to plant roots in the DC area. They will start free tastings every Thursday featuring a different set of winemakers. Organizations can book the event space right away. And they are working on a wine club in the area.

Importantly, the shop has already added a diverse group of wine professionals to their team. They also hope to partner with Howard University to provide scholarship and mentorship opportunities to students who want to get into the industry.

The Urban Grape has joined the DC community and anyone traveling through the area should join them!