Have a Glass of Wine at the Bookstore

by Annie Scott (RSS feed)
Jan 8th 2010 at 10:01PM

A nearly 200-year-old bookstore in Sydney is uniting bibliophiles and oenophiles with a simple, yet brilliant idea: serving wine in their reading room.

Like languishing in the library of someone's country home, guests at Berkelouw Books in Leichhardt, Sydney, can lounge on plush couches and at comfortable tables with plates of cheese and Australian wines while perusing their selection of rare, out-of-print, secondhand and new books. It's a wonderful way to create community, allowing book-lovers to enjoy a book in their store the same way they would at home.

Berkelouw Books has a rich, six generation history of trading in rare and antiquarian books. "Now that people are getting to know about us, we've had great success with our boutique wines and lots of positive feedback," owner Colin Cappelleri told Reuters.

It makes the Starbucks in Barnes & Noble seem positively vulgar.

[via Reuters]

Tags: australia, Berkelouw Books, BerkelouwBooks, bookstore, rare books, RareBooks, sydney

Filed under: Wine, Books

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

jones Jan 9th 2010 5:00AM

When we was stationed the UK (1986-1990) we would go to dinner with the kids (all under 18) and when serving the wine the waiter would ask if we wanted the kids to have any. Unless they changed the law I would think it's still the same.
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DrLorraine Jan 9th 2010 7:35PM

Great idea! Berkelouw Books is setting an example for fellow indie bookstores.

Thank you for the story.

DrLorraine

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