At least four new wine bars have sprung up in Copenhagen just this past year. Each one unique in their atmosphere, interior decoration and wine selection. I don’t get paid to hawk any of these, but among the new and old I do like the inexpensive Vinhanen, the upscale and avant-garde Ved Stranden 10, the veteran Italian-focused Il Senso and the cave-like bio bar Terroiristen. I’m meeting a girl at the most recently opened one, Den Vandrette (‘The Horizontal’), tonight to see if it matches the so-far positive trend of 2013.
The people behind the most recent openings have reclaimed the often misused word ‘authentic’ and serve fun and challenging wine.
In a salute to the courage of these individuals who take financial risks to open niche venues, Asbjørn and I have put together 7 fundamental pieces of the puzzle (and one optional) that we believe make up the foundation of any brilliant wine bar. No wine bar scores 10 out of 10 on all parameters, but all the places we love perform well over average on all of these.
1. Show Us You Care
Even if you serve Michel Gros’ Clos de Réas at €8 per glass, we won’t stop by if your waiters behave like jerks. Treat every customer at the very least with respect, even the clueless, the cheapskates and the know-it-alls.
2. A Somm for All Seasons
Service each customer at eye level. If a guest asks for ‘something really fruity and sweet like a nebbiolo’, resist the urge to correct her. Instead, your job is to find her something she likes however confused she is about wine and help her save face. On the other hand, if we (the know-it-alls) come with an outlandish (read: idiotic) request for a 1997 Swiss chasselas, a good host will do his best to either provide that or the best substitute he can offer.
Real somms like Bo Bratlann make both these challenges look effortless.
Accommodate the clueless guests as helpfully as you would with the wine nerds who know exactly what they want. Don’t make clueless guests feel inadequate because they’re not attuned to the relative merits of jacquère or altesse from Savoie. Be nice, educational and respectful.
3. Let’s Get Weird
This one is easy to get wrong. But to make us regulars at your wine joint, you must take risks by rotating weird wines into your glass list and not play the safe cards over and over again.
Restaurateurs hate waste. That’s why instinctively it seems smart to open bottles of only recognizable, ‘comfort zone’ wines. Things like grenache-based Rhône and AOC Bourgogne. This is a huge mistake in the long run.
You must amuse us, seduce us. Win our trust and open our eyes to try new regions and grapes. Take our hand and lead us out of our comfort zone to Savagnin-Chardonnay blends from Côtes du Jura, biodynamic Slovakian cabernet sauvignon and mencia-based Ribeira Sacra.
In short, serve Côtes du Rhône and you’ll be indistinguishable from any other wine bar. Be the first person to convince me to try Dominio do Bibei, and you’ll have a friend forever.
4. Lighten Up the Room
The last element in the Maslowian bottom of the pyramid is physical surroundings. This is a big one-off expense when you open plus a bit of maintenance, so make your investment count in terms of comfort and ambience.
Whatever decoration theme you choose, understand the scientifically supported fact that wine tastes better under comfortable, classy circumstances. Let this be your guiding light when selecting lamps that give off a natural light and quality chairs for your guests, as well as ensuring good acoustics and background music.
5. A Razor-Sharp Cellar
If the glass list shows your adventurousness, the wine cellar shows your core strength and focus. You can either have a broad, middle-of-the-road selection that tries to cover every single wine region, or you can be a T-shaped wine bar with specialization and depth within a few select regions. Go the second route if you have any sense.
6. Quality Stemware
If you’re new to wine – just trust us – glasses do matter. We don’t expect €25 Zalto glasses necessarily (although if you already have them…), but we want clean, light glasses that augment whichever wine we’re being served.
So for everybody’s sake, stay a few steps above the clunky stemware you find in the kitchen cabinets of Copenhagen student housing.
7. Make It Unique and Make It Yours
Think along the lines of Blue Ocean Strategy. Integrate an offering in your wine bar that is not just best on the existing playing field, but one that sets you apart qualitatively. Vinhanen most famously did this with a gas pump wine dispenser, their branded glass bottles and unbeatable prices.
You can achieve the same goal by other means. Malbeck has cornered the Argentinean wine bar market, Nimb Vinotek has the integrated experience of wine bar, hotel, fine dining and Tivoli, and Tire-Bouchon is the one and only for oysters-and-wine combos.
Be the best at just one thing. Don’t end up as a jack of all trades, master of none.
8. The Food (optional)
In Danish wine culture, food is often secondary to wine. Few wine producing countries have wine bars as stand-alone locations while Northern Europe has really taken to the idea of bars that exclusively serve wine. To our knowledge, even Barcelona has fewer real wine bars than Copenhagen.
If your wine bar chooses to serve food, our advice is to keep it simple, affordable and wine friendly. Simple and affordable because your place is unlikely to have the intimacy of a restaurant (and neither should it try to attain that level of intimacy). Wine friendly because a bowl of olives and cornichons kills most wines, even the high quality ones.
CBS Wine 
Has anyone been to VapeKingz? ;-)