Dallas Commercial Retail Photography: Inside Look at Bishop Art’s Ampelos Wine Bar
The interior space at Ampelos Wine Bar. The bright and colorful space features turquoise wine crates to house the natural wine selection spanning the U.S. and Europe, and the purple velvet barstools call you to stay a while and taste your way through the by-the-glass list.
Ampelos Wine Bar, the newest business to pop up on West Eighth Street in the Bishop Arts neighborhood of Dallas, Texas, is a natural vino bottle shop and wine bar owned by veteran industry professionals Genevieve Weaver and Jessica Martinez. Martinez, formerly of Casa Rubia, FT33, and other top restaurants in Dallas, divides her time between Oregon and Dallas working as a winery and harvest employee for Portland Wine Company (with some of her wines being bottled under the label Love & Squalor). Weaver, a resident of Dallas, runs and manages the shop full-time.
The shop’s name, Ampelos, hails from the classics and is rooted in Greek and Roman mythology. Ampelos is the personification of a grapevine and was the lover of Dionysus, the god of wine.
Being a Dallas Commercial Retail Photographer, I love jumping at the opportunity to photographing small women-owned businesses like this one. This charming retail store has turquoise painted wine crates stacked high against the wall, which houses the selection of thoughtfully curated natural wines from around the globe. If you find that wine makes you feel terrible after you drink it, it’s because you’re drinking manipulated juice. Wine has become big business with brands chock full of chemicals and additives. It’s high fructose corn syrup on steroids.
Natural wine is a movement amongst winemakers to combat that. The focus is first in the vineyard, farming the land based on organic, sustainable, or biodynamic methods, and when the grapes come into the winery they are minimally processed, and often bottled unfiltered and unadulterated.
The result is pure, highly quaffable freshness in a bottle. Some natural wines have received a reputation for being funky or weird, but I think that’s a larger indication of a wine presenting flaws upon opening, which is likely to happen since it’s minimally processed and often didn’t receive stabilizers during bottling like so many conventional wines do.
The exterior of Ampelos Wine Bar, tucked away on Eighth street just down the road from Bishop Art’s main strip of boutiques, businesses, and popular restaurants.
Vivi, the owner of Ampleos Wine Bar, opening a new bottle of wine to pour by the glass for a table of customers.
Love and Squalor Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, made by Jessica, one of the owners of Ampelos Wine Bar. This is the only place you’ll find this wine in Texas.
Ampelos is one of the newer spaces recently opened in one of my favorite neighborhoods in Dallas. I hope you visit them soon, enjoy a glass of wine and wind down after a long day, and take a bottle home (or two)
The interior space, Vivi, one of the owners is behind the counter tasting some Austrian white wines with a local wine sales representative. The acrylic by-the-glass list on the back turquoise wall showcases the rotating features and optional snacks. If you want a killer charcuterie board to drink with your wines, place an order at Lucia down the street and get it delivered to you.
Stacy Markow is a former sommelier turned Commercial Architecture Photographer servicing design clients across the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. Not only can I capture the beauty of your next design project for your portfolio, I can also help you celebrate reaching the finish line by choosing the perfect bottle of Champagne.
For more information on Stacy’s services, or to see more of my photography work, you can visit my website at www.stacymarkow.com
