The Den Wine & Spirits’ Flannery Brown, Beer and Spirits Manager; Dominic Merolla, General Manager and Wine and Sake Buyer; and Thom Sheehan, Senior Team Lead.

The Den Wine & Spirits
125 Wickenden Street
Providence, RI

Square footage: 2,200

Years in operation: 2 years

By Sara Capozzi

Providence’s The Den Wine & Spirits has offered a unique shopping experience to the Fox Point neighborhood since opening in July 2023. Built as part of a development with an anchor destination, The Den offers shoppers a beautiful and bright environment. Its large windows let in plenty of natural light and plants decorate the shop. Selections are neatly organized on wooden shelving with colorful, hand-drawn signage. Being situated just across the parking lot from Trader Joe’s brings in shoppers looking for a bottle of wine, a beer or a spirit to pair with their next meal.

According to Domenic Merolla, General Manager, Wine and Sake Buyer, this prime location brings in “people from all over. Trader Joe’s is quite a big draw, and we have people that come from out of the city, but also a ton of foot traffic from the Fox Point neighborhood. We have a super-young clientele generally, a lot of people who are just graduating college or in grad school, undergrads from JWU and RISD and a lot of young families.”

The Den’s diverse wine selection also attracts shoppers with its focus on organic and biodynamic wines from smaller and single vineyards alongside mainstream wine brands. According to Merolla, more than half of the store’s 1,200 wine SKUs are from certified organic producers, which is important to many of the shop’s clientele who prioritize a healthier lifestyle.

The team brings in new products on a regular basis so customers always have something new to discover. “We have a constantly rotating selection and we get in a lot of new wines every week,” Merolla said. “We taste every product in the store and we’re selective about what we bring in here. We want to show really good values and unique offerings from craft producers from all over the world, from family farms, from small operations and estate-grown wines. Local [producers] are part of that as well. We have a lot of Rhode Island wines, and spirits and beers from Massachusetts, Vermont and all over New England are really popular here. People want to see new stuff they haven’t seen elsewhere, so we try to show them that all while presenting a really good price proposition.”

Merolla and team take an educational approach to their customer service, through hand-selling and regular in-store tastings. “We like to meet customers where they’re at, especially because we have so many really young customers,” he said. “A lot of them don’t really have these strongly held preconceptions about what a certain varietal tastes like or what wine from a certain area is—they want to learn and they want to get exposed to different stuff … We see ourselves as helping to build the next generation of wine drinkers, especially because wine is having a hard time these days with young people. We want to make sure people know that wine is affordable, it’s better for you than drinking liquor and it actually can be inexpensive if you know what you’re buying.”

All of this is made possible by The Den’s super-qualified team of 12 employees, who bring their knowledge and passion for beer, wine and spirits to customers’ shopping experiences. “Everyone who works here has really extensive beverage industry experience, whether if that’s from working in important restaurants in Boston and Providence and New York, people who have worked at wine publications like Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast, wine professionals that have come from other wine shops in Providence like Eno and Bottles,” Merolla said. “We’ve put together a team here that really knows what they’re doing and it’s easy to shop here—it’s lovely, it’s wide open, we have good tags. If you want to talk with someone and work with someone and have a hand-sell situation, we have staff that’s really competent in that and really cares a lot about what they sell.”