Pisano on the patio: Torres China opens first Everwines branch in Beijing

By Jim Boyce

Torres China, which distributes wine from 16 nations and handles two of this country’s top brands — Grace Vineyards and Silver Heights — has opened its first Everwines retail shop in Beijing. The shop is on Xindong Road, close to both Sanlitun and Workers Stadium, areas known as food, beverage and nightlife hubs. It follows on similar outlets in Xi’an, Chengdu and Shanghai.

Along with retail space, Everwines includes two patios (one out front with plenty of sun, one out back with plenty of shade), two lounge areas (one as part of the retail space, one as an event space and VIP room) and an eight-bottle enomatic machine that Torres’ man in Beijing, Damien Shee, demonstrated earlier this week.

Bottles are available for takeaway or, with a rmb50 service charge, for drinking on site. By the way, that rmb50 service charge applies to all bottles, whether at the lower end of the price scale, like this low-alcohol option for the person who needs to function after a liquid lunch:

Or at the higher end:

Retail: rmb14,968; on-site charge: rmb15,018? There is something fun and quirky about that, although I have a feeling the service charge might get dropped if you actually bought the bottle and drank it in the shop. If anyone wants to plunk down the cash to find out, I’d be happy to tag along.

Anyway, I made a second stop recently with B-Side to drink a bottle of Pisano Tannat, a tasty wine from Uruguay. Nice to find there is a 20 percent discount until September 8.

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