Are the northern suburbs (finally) becoming a player in the Twin Cities wine-store scene? In a word, absolutely.

Now we’re talking more due north here. The northeast metro has been stout for some time, with the likes of Winestreet Spirits in North Oaks, BrightWines in North St. Paul and Sutler’s Wine & Spirits in Stillwater. And the northwest suburbs remain largely dormant on this front.

But two recent hires are changing all that. I wrote about Bill Abrahamson upgrading the selections at the Northgate/Top 10 chain in today’s paper. And now comes news that Mike Dombrow has hooked up with Tournament Liquors’ emerging mini-empire.

Dombrow is familiar to many local wine savants as the guiding force behind the vast improvement in Zipp’s wine inventory, continuing a total overhaul started several years ago by Bill Hooper. Mike’s an exuberant, whip-smart dude (a lot like Abrhamason that way) whose love of wine, open-minded approach and savvy sales skills will make their mark up Blaine way.

Corey Burstad  already had built Tournament Liquors into a swell retail outlet and just opened a second store in Ham Lake. Fortunately, he didn’t have to convert a car wash into a liquor store, as was the case at the Blaine outlet. He also has plans to open a wine pub near the first store in the near future.

And good for wine-seeking denizens of the northern suburbs, who now have several oases where once there was a vast desert.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 8:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.