A brand new wine store and gourmand grocer is coming to a major house in Montrose. Named Montrose Grocer, it’s a brand new idea from Heights Grocer proprietor Mary Clarkson.
Positioned within the former Craft Creamery house at 1340B Westheimer, Montrose Grocer will construct on the success of Heights Grocer as a go-to vacation spot for wine lovers searching for a curated choice of bottles from small producers. Whereas the Heights location is a really intimate, retail-only operation that sells wine, items, and gourmand meals objects, Montrose Grocer’s bigger footprint will present it with sufficient house to each promote wine to-go and serve wines by-the-glass for on-site consumption.
When it opens later this fall, the shop will supply seating for about 20 folks inside with a few out of doors patio tables. It would additionally serve a small meals menu of sandwiches, charcuterie boards, and different snacks.
“Heights taught us loads about what an area can do and the way it can operate and the way we wish to develop into an area like this that permits us to pour a glass of wine to our prospects,” Clarkson tells CultureMap.
Clarkson is a hospitality veteran who was a co-owner of Montrose French restaurant L’Olivier, which advanced into Avondale Meals & Wine, a restaurant and boutique wine retailer that closed in 2021. She assumed possession of Heights Grocer in 2024 from founder James Havens. She can also be, full disclosure, an everyday visitor on CultureMap’s “What’s Eric Consuming” podcast.
When offered with the chance to lease the house by house owners Bobby Heugel and Justin Yu, the duo behind the brand new restaurant coming to the former Vibrant house, she jumped on the likelihood to open one other enterprise within the neighborhood.
“I imagine in Montrose as a completely functioning neighborhood that gives what different neighborhoods are lacking out on,” Clarkson says. “It feels as if it’s a really walkable, livable neighborhood that I feel folks wish to be in with out having to get right into a automobile and drive someplace.”
One factor that may set Montrose Grocer other than a number of the close by wine-focused companies is its soundtrack, which will likely be provided by 4,000 vinyl data. It is much like the brand new wave of document bars, similar to 93’ Til, Off the Report, and the foyer bar on the Lodge Saint Augustine that pair cocktails with vinyl collections.
After all, Clarkson will take the wine choice severely, simply as she does within the Heights, however she hopes folks see Montrose Grocer as a welcoming place they will cease by to seize a bottle of wine to take residence for dinner or for space hospitality staff to seize a sandwich and a glass of wine earlier than going subsequent door to Catbirds.
“We’re attempting to make wine enjoyable once more. We would like this to be a spot you may have a glass for pleased hour or an important day bottle or something in between. It’s a spot for everybody,” Clarkson says.
