You may have yet to chance upon Vinyl Wine, which is located just where Spanish Harlem meets the Upper East side on Lexington Avenue. Like most liquor stores, it has an unassuming storefront, but its logo may just draw you to enter and explore a selection of organic wines that you’ll have a harder time finding at its more corporate counterparts. I stopped in one day when Matt, the brother of one of the store’s founders, was breaking down cardboard boxes, and he took the time to talk to me about the store's origins in his brother’s absence.

Vinyl Wine gets it name from the founders’ mutual love of music, which shows in albums by the likes of the Ronettes and Shalamar sitting on the checkout counter and the faces of rock stars like David Bowie gracing the walls. Both named Mike, (Mike Faircloth, Matt’s brother, and Mike Cesari), the founders started the store back in 2010, after Cesari had been living in the neighborhood for several years. He’d watched the gentrification process as Spanish Harlem melted gradually into the Upper East Side, and as more young professionals moved further uptown, he realized that there was a lack of establishments to meet their young professional-type desires—namely, wine and records.

Faircloth was living on the West Coast when he received a call from his old friend from New York. Cesari proposed that Faircloth move back east to start a wine shop…thus, Vinyl Wine came about with the intention of supplying Cesari’s uptown neighborhood with music and good booze. And, as Matt described, his brother knows music. “He’s a classically trained jazz musician,” Matt explained. “He plays upright bass, a little bit of everything.” He had also been a touring musician in various bands before returning to New York to start the wine shop.

The initial plan for Vinyl Wine hit a bit of a snag. The Mikes “quickly learned that you can’t sell records and wine in the same location” due to state laws. That didn’t stop them from sticking with their original theme. Vinyl Wine remains an apt name, as the store shelves a record collection to which both Faircloth and Cesari contribute, along with some of the store’s patrons. “We have customers in the neighborhood who drop off records for us and trade records with us,” said Matt, gesturing to the shelves that sit rather inconspicuously above an array of booze.

As for the booze, Vinyl Wine keeps it organic, with a selection of biodynamic wines thrown into the mix. As Matt told me, their wines come from “mainly family run vineyards in the states…none of the corporate wineries, so you won’t see any of the big name labels.” This means no Barefoot and no Franzia, but that doesn’t discount boxed wines altogether (which tend to get an unfairly bad rap). At Vinyl Wine, the boxes will be made out of recycled cardboard because these organic wineries tend to have an environmentally friendly bend.

With a focus on smaller vineyards and their handcrafted products, Vinyl Wine likewise deals with smaller distributors. This trickles down and translates to the store’s “community vibe,” as Matt puts it.

“It’s very much a neighborhood store,” he described, citing their niche of regulars who have gotten to know the store and its owners enough to trust their recommendations of wines (and liquors, too) that they’d otherwise never heard of. When Mike (or Matt) Faircloth and Mike Cesari stroll around the neighborhood, they’re likely to recognize a number of their customers, and vice versa, as they pass them on the streets.

Faircloth and Cesari have gotten so comfortable in the neighborhood that they’ve continued to expand and fill other “young professional” desires. The pair has (both separately and together) started a bar, a coffee and doughnut store, and a restaurant all in the general vicinity of Vinyl Wine. The latter is ABV, a well-reviewed restaurant just around the corner from the music-loving wine shop. For diners who enjoyed whatever wine they may have sipped over their meals of, say, suckling pig and turnips or fried chicken with kimchi slaw, they might be lucky enough to find the same vintage at Vinyl Wine when they’re missing it the following evening.

Vinyl Wine is located at 1491 Lexington Avenue. The store is open from 1 PM to 10 PM on Mondays through Fridays, noon to 10 PM on Saturdays, and noon to 9 PM on Sundays. For more information or to browse the store’s inventory, check out vinylwineshop.com or give the staff a call at 646-370-4100.

Vinyl Wine; 1491 Lexington Ave.; 646-370-4100.

Photos by Shari Jacobs