About Us
About Us
Table Wine is local, family owned, and dedicated to our Asheville community.
Our Philosophy
WInes for the People
Table Wine Asheville opened in August 2010, and quickly established itself as the premiere wine retailer in Asheville, North Carolina. We focus on “wines for the people” and our tagline is “artisanal wines at affordable prices.”
Whether it be vin de table in France, vino da tavola in Italy, vina de mesa in Spain or just table wine in the U.S., every country has its own designation for honest, affordable and delicious wines that are consumed on a daily basis at the dinner table. Although we stock many premium wines, the average bottle price is about $15, and there are easily over 150 wines available for $15 or less. In total, we stock nearly 900 different wines so we’ve got something for every type of wine drinker.
Farm to Bottle
One of the other things that makes our work unique is that we focus specifically on what we like to call “farmer” wines. Put simply, almost all of our wines come from producers who farm their own grapes or from those who purchase grapes from small, family grape farmers.
These are the producers that subscribe to the notion that great wine is made in the vineyard with good, healthy, carefully grown grapes. In a sense, we offer a “farmer’s wine market”, and if you’ve ever shopped for your vegetables at one of Asheville’s many farmer’s markets, we think you’ll agree that the tomato purchased there far surpasses the quality, freshness and deliciousness of the one purchased at the grocery store. This same premise applies to wine!
Sustainability Tastes Better
We also feature Asheville’s largest and most focused selection of wines produced using organic, sustainable and biodynamic agricultural methods, but very few of the wines in the store are labeled as such.
Many producers have been farming their vineyards this way for many years, but prefer not to spend the thousands of dollars it takes to get this designation printed on their labels. To them, organics is a necessity, a philosophy and a way of life, not a grand marketing scheme. We could go on and on, but the best way to learn more about these types of wines is to stop by the store and ask for Josh, Sarah, Martha, or Peg, and make sure you’ve got extra time on your hands!
Our Dedicated Team
Josh Spurling | Founder, Owner, Wine Monger
I must be honest. I got into this business by accident while I was enjoying my post-college “sabbatical” in Aspen, Colorado……aka goofing off before I had to join the real world. It was 1998 when I took a job at a wine shop/pharmacy called Sundance Drug and Liquor in Snowmass Village because the job provided me with a free ski pass. From there, store owner Barbara Wickes became my early mentor in the business. She gave me my first copy of Wine for Dummies, and I started shifting from a beer drinker to a wine drinker. These were blissful, heady days and it was in Aspen that I met Lynn, who is now my wife.
Martha Speegle-Snell | Store Manager
My introduction to wine was the result of a true small-town connection. I returned to my hometown of Black Mountain after graduating with a degree in English down in Georgia. I was set on finding a job at a public library but was stymied by the slow-turning wheels of bureaucracy. In the meantime, I needed a job to pay the bills. My mother told me that the owner of our small town’s wine shop, who used to be a first-grade teacher when I was in primary school, a logical career progression he always maintained, needed a new employee. At the time, it would have been miraculous if my wine knowledge had filled a single page
Peg Laurita | WINE CONSULTANT
My entry into the world of wine was through restaurants, as I worked my way through college and beyond, eventually ending up in fine dining establishments in New York City and Napa. I fell in love with the wider world of wine, however, while traveling through Europe, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of South America. I noticed that through learning about the wines and the foods of a region, I was able to understand a lot about the culture and history of the place that I was in, and I was
Nicole Barrett | Wine Consultant
It was during college that I first learned how the table functions as a gathering place for people from all corners of life. I was studying music performance and had just met Naoto, the man who would later become my husband, when my love for cooking first took its form. Those years in university taught me the beauty of inviting people to my own table and sharing a meal with them; it’s something truly supernatural, a piece of heaven on earth. It wasn’t too long after this that wine became an extension of that
Lindsey Frazier | Wine Consultant
Before I started delving into the art that is wine, I was in the world of beer. My head was swimming with hops, strange yeasts, and local craft brews. I was under the horrid assumption that wine wasn’t much more than a classier way of drinking alcohol, that it involved using phrases like, “what a buttery mouthfeel”, “do you notice the rhubarb nuances in this red”, and other statements that went too far over my head. What I understood about wine was that I preferred reds to whites, rosé was my favorite, and that, most likely, I would just settle on anything put in front of me at a restaurant.