Vino Crudo Wine Shop
217 Main Street
Wethersfield, CT

Square footage: 250

Years in operation: Almost 2 years

By Sara Capozzi

Nestled in Old Wethersfield’s historic downtown, Vino Crudo Wine Shop was founded by a lawyer with a passion for wine. After living in Southern California for a decade, Co-owner Luigi Ciniglio moved back to his home state of Connecticut in 2021 but wasn’t able to find the type of wine shop that he’d grown to love in California – a shop specializing in organic and biodynamic wines. 

“I found I didn’t really have a place to go more or less,” Ciniglio said. “Nobody was really doing what I had a vision of doing and so after a couple of years of doing private wine classes and starting with a caterer’s license we stumbled upon the opportunity to get this location.”

Ciniglio and his business partner, Elijah Hilliman, purchased the boutique shop in April 2024, with a focus on organic and biodynamic wines at a variety of price points from around the world. “It’s like my wine closet or wine cellar,” Ciniglio said. “It’s the wines that I would drink. I handpick every single wine in here.”

On one side of the shop, wines are arranged according to themes such as Charcuterie Buddies and Netflix and Chillable Reds to offer guests easy pairing suggestions. “It’s this different approach to buying wine, trying to demystify it,” Ciniglio said. “We try to set it up so you can walk in here and know nothing about wine. You don’t have to come in and say, ‘I want a rosé from this region in France,’ that’s not required here.” Vino Crudo also offers a unique selection of conservas and other items to pair
with wines.

“We’re really trying to build a community around people who care about how things are made, these [winemakers] are families, these are people with their hands in the dirt, these are not companies with a massive number of employees, this is usually friends and families doing this stuff,” Ciniglio said. 

“We generally know the backstory of every wine here. We know the people who make some of these wines, some of them are our friends, and so it’s a very personal shopping experience; we really care about what we’re selling here.”

Vino Crudo’s customer base is primarily locals and has become a destination for some out-of-towners. The shop offers both wine classes and a wine club which follow a different theme or showcase a different region every month. The wine classes are casual, offer tastings of five wines and are often held at a pizza place around the corner, “So it’s a low high pairing – really nice wine with some informal pizzas and bruschetta,” Ciniglio said. 

Inspired by the wine culture of Europe and its camaraderie, Ciniglio and Hilliman have started to create a similar scene here. They offer weekend tastings, host vinyl DJ parties in the summer and feature the work of local artists, creating a sense of community for locals who share their passion for wine. 

“We’re really drawn to the scenes you’ll see in Europe, where right outside of a place like this you just have a crowd hanging out drinking wine and talking and it just evolves naturally as the day goes on,” Ciniglio said. “We try to invoke that.”