Naples to Get a New Wine Shop

The first drip of information is a promising one: Bruce Nichols, honorary trustee of the Naples Winter Wine Festival, will be selling, storing and educating locals on fine wine.

​Oenophiles are lucky to start 2017 with a taste of exciting news—one of the world’s leading wine experts (and no, that’s not hyperbole) has plans to make his knowledge and life’s work accessible to everyone in town.

Bruce Nichols, who has called Naples home since 2004, is an honorary trustee of the Naples Winter Wine Festival (he helps coordinate the vintners who participate and secures the master sommeliers working throughout the weekend). He is now getting ready to open a wine shop and storage facility in downtown Naples this spring, the two separate businesses to be called The Wine Store and Naples Wine Storage.

He has worked behind the scenes for years, writing wine lists and hosting special dinners at area restaurants in addition to managing the cellars of our most zealous collectors, but this will be a project bearing his name for the general public’s consumption.

Both will be housed in the new complex going up on U.S. 41 and First Avenue North, a cosmopolitan structure that will also hold Timeless – an MHK Eatery and Le Moulin Bakery and Bistro (they’re expected to debut sooner, after the first phase of construction is completed this winter).

In addition to offering temperature-controlled bottle storage for individual collectors, two unique features of Naples Wine Storage will be that Nichols will accept deliveries for clients sent directly from vineyards, and he’ll also arrange for your wine to be insured. On the retail side, he will sell intriguing, hard-to-find picks from regions across the world, and he’ll be leading tastings and workshops, aiming to bring in the wine world dignitaries he’s spent years courting as a private retailer for high-end clients and a representative of the United States’ premier wine festival.

“I’ll carry small, family-owned artisan wines—you won’t see wines that you’ll find in grocery stores or big-box stores. And I’m all about education,” Nichols says. “I’m looking to do things that have never before been done in this town.”

Naples is known as a destination for oenophiles; with this news, 2017 is already looking like a particularly auspicious vintage.

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