Diversity on Local Bottle Shop Shelves

By Mary Orlin

How do you shop for wine, beer, and other libations? These days more of us are looking for labels that align with our values. Whether it be a focus on the environment, equality, transparency, or social justice, we want to put our money towards products that contribute to more than just a producer’s bottom line.

Here’s a look at three East Bay bottle shops that are curating products from a more diverse community than you’ll find at a typical beverage retailer. They all have a common goal of highlighting women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ producers as they introduce you to your next great sip.

 

 

Alkali Rye

Jessica Moncada Konte, co-founder of Oakland’s Alkali Rye, calls herself a beverage boo. “I like to drink all the time, but I don’t necessarily always want something alcoholic,” she says. And to that end, she and business partner Kori Saika Chen created a bottle shop offering libations to delight you through your day, from coffee, tea, and matcha to wine, beer, spirits, and nonalcoholic beverages.

The duo wanted a name for their shop that reflected their Oakland roots, and it was the California native grass found in the Oakland hills that inspired Chen to come up with the name Alkali Rye. The grass is adaptive, wild, and resilient, which is how they strive to be, and, indeed, how they have had to be, as they opened their shop in the summer of 2020 and then survived and adapted to the ever-changing pandemic and post-pandemic environment.

Moncada Konte’s background is in restaurants and bartending. She grew up working for her father’s Oakland-based Red Bay Coffee company, where she met Chen as he was importing Japanese matcha. Their combined knowledge and passions around the work fed into their creation of Alkali Rye.

“As Black and brown people, we’re always thinking about where we’re spending our dollars and making sure that we’re all represented, especially when we have buying power,” Moncada Konte says.

The partners credit friend and local wine director Vinny Eng with opening their eyes to inequities around queer representation in the wine world. They’ve also noticed that Black-owned labels in the nonalcoholic space are few. Giving voice to these underrepresented labels can amplify them to consumers.

With a north star that points them toward BIPOC, women, and queer producers, they also look for environmentally friendly work practices and companies that uplift their workforce. East Bay producer labels lining Alkali Rye’s shelves include Purity Wine, a Richmond-based natural winery; Oakland’s McBride Sisters; and Oakland’s Den Sake. For spirits, they reach toward Oakland’s Wright & Brown Distilling Co, Berkeley’s Home Base Spirits, and others with similar values.

While “Sip Well” is the motto at Alkali Rye, the partners stock a variety of pantry goods from underrepresented communities. You’ll always find Hayward’s Small Hand Foods cocktail syrups, but also look for products like “lady-owned” Oakland-born Flowerhead Tea, Mama Teav’s Hot Garlic Chili Oil OG (an Oakland made Cambodian heritage product), and Ginger Lab Original Ginger Beer, which is owned and operated by Bay Area native Deb Chang. Barware, glassware, and cocktail books round out the selection.

Alkali Rye | 3256 Grand Ave, Oakland | sipalkalirye.com 

 

 

Mo’s Wine Bar

It was the 2008 economic downturn that pushed former interior designer and Alameda native Maura Passanisi to turn her career path in a new direction. For fun, she took a job at the now-shuttered Alameda Wine Co wine bar, but that’s when the wine bug bit.

“A wine bar is so accessible,” she says. “You can pour them a splash of something that you think they might like, and they can try it on the spot and tell you if they like it or not. It’s that immediacy of being able to recommend a new wine to someone.”

Passanisi’s first step into entrepreneurship was in 2019, when she put on the Della Donna Women Winemakers Festival in Oakland. The culmination is her opening of Mo’s Wine Bar.

“Mo’s is a women-focused wine bar, but I also heavily support BIPOC, LGBTQI, and trans winemakers who represent as women.”

Her focus on woman-owned labels came from a women’s wine-tasting group, where members discussed the lack of representation by women at festivals, restaurants, and bars.

“Being women, we wanted to see more women.”

Mo’s operates out of a Victorian-era building with some significant history: It once housed the Pop Inn, which opened in 1937, and the Churchward Pub operated there prior to Mo’s opening.

“I am proud of that history,” Passanisi says. “I’m happy to continue the legacy of this being a bar in this space.”

Mo’s Wine Bar | 1515 Park St, Alameda | moswinebar.com

 

 

CoCo Noir Wine Shop and Bar

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not just a fad,” says CoCo Noir proprietor Alicia Kidd. “It’s something that is going to be here for the long term, and my business model is built off of that diversity and inclusion.”

This Oakland resident was working as a specialist in the healthcare sector when the opportunity to become a wine brand ambassador for the Boisset Collection came along. She turned her love of wine into a side gig, and that paved the way toward the Wine Noire, a Berkeley-based import and distribution company she founded in 2017 with the motto “Wine for the Culture.” The portfolio is filled with wines from women and BIPOC domestic and international producers.

While Kidd’s goal was to become California’s biggest distribution company focusing on inclusive brands, she still encountered inequity when it came to getting those labels on retail shelves. Her answer was CoCo Noir Wine Shop and Bar, which she funded through the equity crowdfunding platform Wefunder, becoming the first Black woman raising money there for a specialty wine shop. Opened in December 2022 in the Black Arts Movement Business District, CoCo Noir became Oakland’s first women- and BIPOC-focused multicultural wine shop.

Kidd found inspiration for the name CoCo Noir in the life of French fashion designer Coco Chanel. “She has some problematic past behavior, but she was a woman with a high-end luxury fashion brand,” Kidd explains. “When you come into CoCo Noir, you’re gonna see that this is an upscale place where everyone is welcome. We’re featuring brands made by people of color, but it’s for everyone to enjoy, no matter your culture or background.”

Kidd has been keen on introducing her customers to wines from South Africa, which hosts one of the largest concentrations of Black-owned wineries in the world. Kumusha Wines and Aslina Wines are among the South African labels she carries.

Look for East Bay producers like Wachira Wines, McBride Sisters, Longevity Wines, and Free Range Flower Winery, plus Sonoma labels Theopolis Vineyards and Bodkin Wines, and Napa-based Brown Estate. There’s also a selection of beer and nonalcoholic beer and wine from minority producers. ♦

CoCo Noir Wine Shop & Bar | 360 13^th St, Oakland | coconoirwine.com

 

Mary Orlin is a James Beard Award– and Emmy Award–winning writer and TV producer and a WSET Advanced certified sommelier. For many years she was the Mercury News wine writer and was executive producer of NBC’s national wine show, In Wine Country. She now co-hosts a tasty podcast called  Sip, Sip Hooray, exploring winemakers, wine, and other spirited libations.