Harlem Vintage

Central Harlem

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Wine store owners Eric Woods and Jai Jai Greenfield are spreading their love of wine in New York’s famed Harlem neighborhood.
By Robyn Moreno

After seven years of enjoying Harlem’s flourishing restaurant scene, but still finding himself unable to buy a decent bottle of wine in his neighborhood, Eric Woods decided to take matters into his own hands. Where Manhattan may have a wine store ever y five or six blocks, there wasn’t one near Woods for over forty blocks. “I was spending way too much time across town in Sherry-Lehmann’s,” says Woods. “As a consumer, it was a challenge to find and purchase wine in Harlem that I wanted to drink.”

So the ad exec-by-day and wineenthusiast-by-night teamed up with college pal Jai Jai Greenfield and together they decided to open up Harlem Vintage Wine Store, the area’s first boutique vintner. Thus began a two-year project that included creating an extensive business plan, dealing with tricky zoning laws, and tasting enough wine to last a lifetime.

“We carry up to 300 different labels,” explains Greenfield. “Tasting and deciding what wine people wanted to buy was an onerous endeavor. “But,” she adds with a smile, “we didn’t complain too much.”

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Hours

Open 7 Days a Week
Monday - Thursday 10am-9pm
Friday & Saturday 10am-10pm
Sunday 12pm-6pm