Table Wine

Atwood Avenue is the spine of Schenk-Atwood, one of Madison's most self-contained east-side neighbourhoods, and Table Wine has been its wine shop for years — a small, well-curated room of the sort that survives on staff knowledge rather than shelf space. Its inclusion here is about a specific and growing part of that shelf: the non-alcoholic wine and spirits range, which Madison Eats Food Tours describes as extensive and which is, as far as we can establish, the deepest selection inside the Madison city limits.

The distinction from a dedicated shop is worth drawing. Sober Social in Middleton carries more than a hundred non-alcoholic products and nothing else; Table Wine carries a good range alongside a full conventional wine list. Each has an advantage. The specialist has depth and an owner who has tasted everything. The generalist has something a specialist cannot offer — you can buy the de-alcoholised bottle and the regular bottle in one visit, which is how most mixed households actually shop, and the staff can tell you which non-alcoholic wine drinks closest to the Sancerre you already like because they sell both. For a couple where one person has stopped drinking and the other has not, that is often more useful than a trip across the isthmus.

Practically, the hours are unusually good for a bottle shop: noon to 9pm Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 8pm Monday and noon to 6pm on Sunday, so you can call in after work rather than racing a 6pm close. Schenk-Atwood makes an easy pairing — Blind Shot Social Club, which runs the largest non-alcoholic drinks menu in Wisconsin, is a few minutes away at Garver Point, and the Herbiery's hop-free taproom is on Winnebago Street nearby. A shop, a bar with eighteen zero-proof cocktails and a brewery doing something genuinely strange, all within a mile, is a good afternoon.