Assorted Table Wine & Shop

Flour & Ink Audio Story with Josh Villapando

6:06

Hello, my name is Joshua Villapando. I own Assorted Table Wine & Shop in the Market at 7th Street, and I’m here to talk about the Surrey Sellers Tannat red wine.

My first impression of Tannat was that it was really inky and super tannic. The name “tannat” comes from its tannins—chemicals from the grape skin that react with your saliva and give you that feeling of dryness on your palate. My first experience with it was a Tannat out of southwestern France. It’s a very inky, extracted, dark, almost opaque red wine in the glass, but medium to full‑bodied. It’s known for being heavy in tannins, bone‑dry, with a lot of dark red fruit and medium to medium‑plus acidity.

Its ancestral home is southwestern France, but Tannat has also become prolific in Uruguay, where you’ll often see it blended with grapes like Carménère and Merlot.

North Carolina is wide open. We’re obviously known for muscadine and scuppernong vinified as sweet wines, but the trajectory of North Carolina winemaking over the last 15 years has only gone in the right direction. Wines are getting more delicious year over year, and the public is becoming more receptive to experimenting with North Carolina Vitis vinifera—noble wine grapes that typically originate around the Mediterranean Sea. Think Merlot, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc.

In North Carolina, we’re hot on the heels of Virginia with Cabernet Franc, and I think we do a really great Cabernet Franc. But Tannat—I really believe in my heart it’s going to be the next big red coming out of North Carolina. For those who have experimented with North Carolina reds, Cabernet Franc is extremely delicious, but I think the rising star is Tannat. It gives the color wine consumers are looking for, especially those indoctrinated into wine through California reds. Tannat gives great extraction and extended maceration—meaning the grape skins stay in contact with the juice for a long time.

That’s what makes red wine red. The tannins, the polyphenols, all that ink comes from the skins. In the case of Surrey Sellers Tannat, the skin contact is extended to give that dark, almost opaque extraction. It looks gorgeous in the glass.

I’ve been in the wine and culinary industry for about 30 years—actually more than 30 years. Since 1998, almost 30 years just in Charlotte alone. I started at Pasta & Provisions for 10 years as their general manager—truly the best 10 years of my life. Then I was the first non‑owner GM at Ilios Noche. After that, I was the last wine buyer when this venue—the Market at 7th Street—was Reed’s Fine Foods. I was the last wine buyer there before managing and buying wine at Common Market in Plaza Midwood.

Eventually, I got the opportunity to start my own business, Assorted Table Wine & Shop, here in the Market. Thanks to Tommy George over at Pasta & Provisions—he took me under his wing and mentored me. I fell hopelessly in love with Italian wine. He sent me on trips where I stayed only at wineries—twice in Italy, twice in Oregon, twice in California. It was a deep dive, a complete immersion into wine and food of particular cultures.

Fast forward: with a lot of nudging from mentors in the wine industry, I chose to learn how to grow grapes and make wine as a student at the Shelton-Badgett NC Center for Viticulture and Enology.

I’m proud to say that Assorted Table has the most comprehensive and esoteric international wine selection in Charlotte—if not the region, perhaps even North Carolina. It’s a big brag, but I know we bring it. Our prices range from about $15 all the way up to almost $2,000 a bottle.