Delafia

Delafia is a small natural wine bar and bottle shop on South Roxboro Street in Hayti, the historically Black neighbourhood south of downtown Durham. It deals in low-intervention wine from small producers — a rapidly changing list, sold by the glass at the bar or by the bottle to take away — and it has the feel of a speakeasy more than a shop, with a short menu of things to eat and coffee served alongside.

The non-alcoholic element is real but modest, and worth describing precisely. The bar's own invitation is to come in for a nibble and a pour from its rotating menu of low-intervention wines, beer and non-alcoholic bevs, which puts alcohol-free drinks on the same rotating list as everything else rather than in a fixed section. Discover Durham includes it on the city's official non-alcoholic page among the shops curating non-alcoholic products locally and beyond, in the same group as LouElla and Beer Study.

What that means in practice is that there is always something alcohol-free worth drinking here, chosen by people who take drinks seriously, but there is no published list to check before you go and no named zero-proof cocktails. If you want to know what is open this week, call or ask. For a natural wine bar — a category that has been slower than most to take non-alcoholic drinking seriously — having it on the rotating menu at all is meaningful.

This is a venue that sells alcohol and is built around wine, so it is not a room for anyone who would rather not be around it. Hours run from four in the afternoon, to ten early in the week and midnight Thursday through Saturday.