Accent Wine Parlor

Accent Wine Parlor opened in August 2021 at 49 North High Street, in the historic Citizens Building on the downtown stretch of High below the Short North. It is led by sommelier Gregory Stokes together with chef Joshua Dalton, whose Veritas sits a few blocks north on Gay Street, and it was conceived as a corrective: Stokes told Columbus Navigator at the opening that they built it "because we saw that no one was doing wine retail the way that we thought it should be done." In practice that means a shop that is also a parlour — a room designed to be sat in and drunk in, with bottles from around $10 through to collector wines, rather than a rack-lined retail unit with a tasting counter bolted on.

The reason it belongs in a non-alcoholic guide is that the alcohol-free selection is a maintained collection rather than a shelf of leftovers. The shop stocks alcohol-removed still and sparkling wines from serious producers — Leitz, the German house whose de-alcoholised Rieslings are among the few that survive the process with acidity intact, is the anchor — alongside Copenhagen Sparkling Tea, the Danish blend of brewed teas that is built to occupy the same place at a table as a wine: tannic, aromatic, structured enough to sit through a course. That distinction matters for anyone who has tried to make a dinner work on sparkling water. Accent also produces its own syrups, runs daily tastings and weekly classes, and delivers across the Columbus metro as well as shipping nationally, so a bottle can be tried in the room before a case goes home. Hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 1pm to 9pm, with Mondays by appointment only. One practical note: because Accent is a shop as much as a bar, the alcohol-free bottles can be bought to take away as well as drunk in, which is unusual in Columbus — most venues with a good zero-proof list will pour one but not sell one. For anyone hosting, that makes it the most reliable place downtown to pick up an alcohol-removed sparkling wine that will hold up on a dinner table.