By Lauren Otis, Staff Writer
Is there room for another wine merchant in Princeton?
Mark Censits thinks so.
In July, he intends to open CoolVines, a wine purveyor which will aim to educate and inspire sometime wine drinkers and bring them into the wine appreciation fold.
”We are actually trying to grow the wine market, not steal market share from existing merchants,” said Mr. Censits, 46, CoolVines’ president and CEO, as he showed off the small, warm space with wide-plank wood floors at the corner of Nassau and Harrison Streets where his store will be located. It will feature 300 wine selections, as well as select beers and small-batch spirits, he said.
This will be the second CoolVines store. Mr. Censits, a 14-year Princeton Borough resident, opened the first in Westfield last September.
”Just talking with people in the industry, it takes two years to break even. We are at breakeven now, we are only nine months in business” in the Westfield location, he said.
”My belief is there are people who are looking for an option that isn’t out there,” Mr. Censits said. He described these consumers as younger professionals, not necessarily wealthy yet, but educated, who enjoy wine but are not interested in devoting large amounts of time to learning the arcane world of domains, varietals, regions and vintages on the one hand, and don’t like being told what to buy on the other.
”They don’t like that old school model of having an expert saying this is what you should drink,” Mr. Censits said, including slavishly following the popular 100-point scoring method popularized by wine writer Robert Parker.
Rather than arrange wines by region and country, CoolVines groups them according to attributes they have in common, such as what food they are best paired with. The full-bodied red category will include French Bordeaux and Italian Brunellos as well as similar wines from other parts of the world. His system enables him to introduce consumers to other than big brands in the wine world, letting them learn about and consume interesting smaller producers but not being overwhelmed with wine esoterica, Mr. Censits said.
To this end, Mr. Censits has developed a system of labeling each wine’s attributes individually. “Every bottle has a tag on it coded to describe the style of wine,” which goes home with the bottle, helping the consumer pair the wine with meals at home, he said.
After dreaming up the system, Mr. Censits said he found other wine merchants who also used a “user-friendly categorization scheme” — including Best Cellars in New York City — although his is meant to help consumers outside of the store as well, giving them knowledge they can continue to use. He said he has found that as they have learned, customers in his Westfield store have graduated from purchasing the occasional bottle to becoming case buyers.
CoolVines in Princeton will have at least two tastings a week and will feature the same collaborative approach with employee-partners who each concentrate on a favorite type of wine (or spirit or beer) and search out selections for the store to offer.
Mr. Censits said he is not a wine expert but a wine appreciator like his clientele. “I am more focussed on building a business. In some respects I am my own best customer,” he said, adding “it is not my goal to be the smartest wine guy in town.”
Before starting CoolVines, Mr. Censits worked at a boutique business consulting firm which engaged in restructurings and turnarounds of private companies for hedge funds and other institutional partners. He was called on to rectify a wide spectrum of company problems, including balance sheet issues, problems with a manufacturing process, and labor relations, he said.
Mr. Censits ultimately decided to pair his own business expertise, and interest in wine, into a business of his own. He took a three-week course on the wine business at University of California, Davis and conducted a lot of his own market research. “I recruited a think tank of wine experts through Craig’s List” and over a large dinner “we just talked,” he said.
Just referring to a wine as a “second growth Bordeaux” implies so much knowledge on the part of a consumer, Mr. Censits said. He and the wine experts he sought out, thought there could be a more intuitive and more easily learned approach to wine selection and appreciation.
”I bought the license here in Princeton in 2006 and have been waiting for the right location to become available,” Mr. Censits said.
He said the Princeton store opening has lagged in part because he was originally interested in opening CoolVines in the planned retail portion of the borough’s downtown redevelopment project, which has been delayed for years. He said he will consider a downtown location in the future perhaps, but at present is happy to be opening in the eastern section of the borough.
”I’m very happy to make a run for it here and if it works out we’d just stay,” he said.
Mr. Censits said he will happily deliver to Princeton residents from his Westfield store prior to his July opening in the borough. Internet wine orders will be possible in about a month’s time, he said. More information on CoolVines can be found at www.coolvines.com.