Downtown Napa is suddenly awash in wine bars and tasting rooms, but Oxbow Wine Merchants stands out among them.

One of the stars of still-new Oxbow Public Market, the large wine store features a large bar where you can taste — and drink — a large variety of wines including some of Napa’s best bargain glasses as well as rare treasures.

You can also order appetizers with the wine, buy local and exotic wines, taste and buy a large variety of cheese — or just hang out at one of the tables inside or on the deck overlooking the Napa River.

Napans are discovering the spot as not just a place to buy wine and cheese, but a friendly wine bar where a crowd seems to be collecting at the end of the day. The deck is sure to become even more popular as the weather improves and umbrellas are added for ultra-violet-averse locals.

A sister to Ferry Building Wine Merchants

Oxbow Wine Merchants is actually a branch of the popular Ferry Building Wine Merchants in San Francisco.

Both sites are owned by managing partners Peter Granoff, Debbie Zachareas and Bo Thompson. Granoff, well know in the wine business for his pioneering Internet wine site Virtual Vineyards, tends to hang out at the Napa store, while the others are more often in San Francisco, where Zachareas was formerly co-owner and director of San Francisco’s Bacar restaurant.

Granoff came to wine from the restaurant business. He was raised in inland Carmel Valley before it was chic, and landed a job in the Swiss Alps at 19. He got a degree in international relations and considered a career in foreign service — or theater — but ended up spending two years with a company that gave elegant balloon tours of the wine country there.

He next joined the famed Stanford Court hotel in San Francisco as wine director, and supervised wine and food while he also got his Master Sommelier certification.

He took over wine duties at Joyce Goldstein’s legendary Square One Restaurant after her son Evan left those duties, and in 1994, founded Virtual Vineyards with his brother. The site eventually became wine.com.

Virtual Vineyards was the first company selling wine on the Internet and generated enormous visibility while attracting unrealistic sums from hopeful venture capitals. “It was an insane six-year ride,” said Granoff. “It was a great experience and education — on reflection,” he added. “It would have made a good $20 million business, but the (venture capitalists) wanted the next Amazon.”

That didn’t happen, and in 2001, Granoff found himself with no job and no money. “I didn’t take anything away from that time,” he admitted.

“I spent a few years licking my wounds, earning a living by consulting.”

About that time, the Ferry Building was being renovated, and Granoff started talking to Zachareas. Adding Thompson, who had worked at Virtual Vineyards with him and at Real Restaurants, Granoff wrote a business plan. They raised money through relatively small limited partners, as is common for restaurants. That store opened in July 2003, and has been successful since.

A bigger challenge

The  4,000 sq. ft. shop in the Oxbow is larger than the 2,900 sq ft. of the Ferry Building version, and it has added a cheese shop and a minimal kitchen that the Ferry Building lacks.

A key element of the Ferry Building is the wine bar, which allows customers to try wines they don’t know before tasting, a critical difference from typical retail wine shops. That means it can sell lesser-known, often bargain wines — and that advantage is true in Napa, too.

The Oxbow store carries a smaller stock than in San Francisco, but at least part of that is because it’s waiting for some shelving to arrive. On the other hand, because legally it’s the same business, they can move wines back and forth easily between stores.

The wine selection skews toward small California boutiques, and the selection here is naturally a bit more Napa-centric, but Granoff has no intention of making it a Napa-only store. “That would be a mistake,” he says. For one thing, they sell a lot of wines under $20, and there aren’t many of those made here. “There are only so many $75 wines you can have on the shelf.”

Granoff says that they’re trying to stock some of the wineries in Napa that are so small that they can’t carry them in San Francisco, but admits the competition for attention from local vintners is overwhelming. “There are always more wines than you can handle.”

He also notes, like other local wine specialists, that locals tend to be most interested in “other” wines, while tourists buy the Napa selections.

Cheese and food added

Granoff says the cheese department is going well.

Ironically, that wasn’t part of the initial plan, but he found they had more space than needed, and the large square room precluded easy splitting so they decided to do it themselves.

Thalassa Skinner is manager assisted by Ricardo Huijon, a cheese expert who was with Dean & DeLuca 10 years.

It has a large and interesting selection, but as with the wine, Granoff says the idea is to have a careful selection, not everything. “We buy maybe five to seven of every 100 we taste,” he claims.

For locals, one of the real attractions is the reasonable wines, particularly those served at the bar. There are a few house-labeled selections, including a syrah at $10, a chardonnay at $9.50, a pinot noir at $20  and a new $9 German riesling, all with screw caps.

They and other wines are poured at the bar for tastes or glasses, and the bar also serves two wines on tap, presently a nonvintage barbera from L’Uvaggio at $5 and a Benessere pinot grigio for $4. They’re served from 15-gallon beer-style kegs, and will rotate with different brands, as nearby Cuvée does with 12 wines on tap.

The bar also serves four craft beers, offering rare 8-ounce pours that many people prefer to the usual 16 ounces.

The food selection draws heavily on the cheese shops and other stores at the Oxbow Market including Model Bakery, the Fatted Calf charcuterie and Whole Spice.

The store avoided huge cost and complexities by skipping a stovetop and hood, instead preparing foods from convection and microwave ovens, soup warmers and a panini press. It may add BBQ on the deck as weather improves.

The deck is a big draw, and Oxbow Wine Merchants is happy to serve wine there even if people bring in food from other stores in the Oxbow.

Granoff has received many inquires from corporations and travel companies for events; the store can host eight to 10 people for private events and 100 for a buyout of the whole place.

Granoff says his biggest challenge is getting the word out about the Oxbow Wine Merchants; even visitors to the Oxbow Market were missing its somewhat hidden location until new signs were added.

To build visibility (and business), he’ll be adding winemaker events like those in the Ferry Building. They’ll be from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday nights and very informal. Also coming are wine and cheese classes.