Every other week, as regular readers know, Terroirist poses 16 questions to a wine shop owner. This week, we’re featuring Mitchell Pressman, owner of Chesapeake Wine Company in Baltimore, Maryland.

Located in a hip neighborhood on the east side of Baltimore, Chesapeake Wine Company borrows its name from the Bay outside its front door. Situated on a main thoroughfare that connects the neighborhoods of East Baltimore with downtown and the famous Inner Harbor, the store certainly benefits from a prime location. And as more and more Americans and Baltimoreans choose wine as their beverage preference, Mitchell will certainly be a valued resource to help them quench their thirst.

Check out our interview with Mitchell below the fold…

How did you end up owning a wine shop?

After twenty years in the wine trade, first in retail, then distributing, importing and consulting, it was time to actually own a business, instead of “taking ownership” of someone else’s business. When I saw the construction work around the Can Company in Canton (Baltimore) in the spring of 1998, something clicked. Chesapeake Wine Company opened about six months later.

What makes your store unique?

We have a full-service bar (with small bar food menu) in the middle of the floor, with seating for roughly 40 people, surrounded by shelves and racks full of wine, craft beers, top-shelf spirits. And a small deli case stocked with artisanal cheese and meat. We cure our own olives and make our own olive tapenades and roasted red pepper salad.

What are the biggest challenges in owning a wine shop?

Cash flow and inventory control top the list, along with resisting the temptation to take the easy route and stock the store with the biggest, most popular brands.

How do you stay up to date on wine news and trends?

Staying in touch with friends and colleagues I’ve known for many years helps keep me up to date on wine news. As for trends, my goal is to be ahead of trends. By the time a “new” grape variety or wine region makes the news, in hard print or blog, we’ve usually been carrying it for some time.

What wine regions or varietals are you most excited about right now?

If we have a specialty it is unusual grape varieties — we usually have more than 150 different varietals, in blend or single-varietal wine, in stock at any one time. The latest curiosity is a wine made from 100% Colorino from Fattoria Poggiopiano in Chianti Classico. Our next wine of the week, however, is more exciting because it’s reasonably priced and perfect for the season: Gurrutxaga Bizkaiko Txakolina Rose 2010, made from 100% Hondarribi Beltza (the red version of Hondarribi).

Where do you look for new wines — and how do you decide which ones to sell?

I rely heavily on my best specialty wine wholesalers and importers to bring me new stuff. The best reps know that if they’ve got something unusual, I’m the go-to guy. If it’s good, it doesn’t matter how obscure or esoteric the wine is, they know I’ll get behind it if I think it’s worth it. Deciding is pretty easy — since I taste everything, everything, before I buy it; if I like it and I have a space for it, I’ll buy it. And since we’ve built a strong level of trust with our regular customers, and we use our wine by the glass list to feature new and (especially) unusual arrivals, the new stuff gets ample opportunity to sell. From that point on, the customers decide which new arrivals succeed, and which do not.

Tell us about some of the best perks you’ve taken advantage of as a retailer when traveling to wine regions.

Easily, it is the opportunity to meet and get to know the people growing the grapes, making the wine. Walking through a vineyard with a person who has touched every single plant thousands of times reminds me that wine is the result of hard work: farming. The most amazing experiences I’ve had during travels in wine country have all involved a relatively simple act: breaking bread — sitting around a table in a winegrower’s house, eating food they cooked, drinking wine they made, talking and laughing with their family.

Do you stock old and/or rare wines? Which currently stocked bottle excites you the most?

We stock a lot of rare wines in that most of the growers I feature tend to be very small producers, but not rare in the sense that they have cult followings. I love Champagne and Burgundy, so I would have to say the magnums of Cedric Bouchard’s Roses de Jeanne 2006 Les Ursules (Champagne) and Thibault Liger-Belair’s Nuits Saint-Georges 1er Cru Les Saint-Georges ’07 are currently the hardest for me to resist taking home.

Are you a collector? Tell us about the wines you bring home.

I collected a little bit during my first tour in retail — 1979 to about 1986 — but very little since then. I’m generally too wrapped up in drinking (as opposed to tasting) all the new stuff that comes in. It’s one thing to taste, spit and purchase, even with decades of experience that allow me to make a reasonably educated guess about how the wine will taste at the end of the bottle – that most important glass that forms our most lasting impression of the wine. I bring home lots of bubbles — Cremant, Champagne, Cava — and then whatever I’ve chosen for wine of the week. And then — if I have an idea of what we’re going to be eating for dinner — a few bottles that might work with the evening’s menu.

What’s the wine that got away? In other words, has anything ever passed through your store that you wish you had held onto for yourself?

If I’ve learned one thing, it is that there will always be another great wine to drink and/or sell. I never look back and say to myself, “I should have bought more of that.”

What was the last wine you opened for a special occasion?

Without discussion of what makes an occasion “special,” it would have to be a bottle of one of those wines I used to collect: Dunn Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain 1982. It’s worth noting the alcohol content: 13.5%. With the notable exception of Ridge Monte Bello, when is the last time you saw a recent release of California Cabernet Sauvignon with less than 14%?

How can a customer signal that he or she is knowledgeable about wine, so you steer them to something a wine geek would appreciate?

Wine-knowledgeable customers don’t have to signal me — I can usually figure it out in a few seconds. And CWC is full of stuff a wine geek would appreciate — in fact, it’s hard to find a bottle here a wine geek wouldn’t appreciate!

If a customer presents him or herself as not knowing that much about wine, do you steer them to interesting and unusual or recognizable? Why?

See my previous answer, but more importantly, I’m not so concerned about whether or not a wine might be unusual or recognizable. My job is to ask any customer a few questions that will help me pick out a bottle they’ll enjoy drinking, period. I must stress again, we have so few commonly seen labels that this is pretty much a non-issue.

Any tips for finding a good bargain?

Stay in the old world — France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece. The places with real and ancient wine cultures are the ones that have the greatest variety of fascinating, delicious wines, many at incredibly reasonable prices.

Do you advertise scores from publications like Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, or Wine Enthusiast when bottles you stock do well? What’s your take on the current push back against scores?

Never have, never will. Even thirty years ago when I did include my own scores in my own tasting notes. I gave up on scoring about 25 years ago. It is absurd to objectify a product so subject to variation. Worse, points create and perpetuate lazy merchants, which makes for wary, suspicious consumers, which makes it more difficult for good wine merchants to gain their trust. Is there really a push back against scores? It’s about time!

Do you have any special events — like weekly tastings, winemaker dinners, or classes? How much do they benefit your business?

Yes, and they provide a great benefit to our business. In addition to offering about 25 wines by the glass (or “mini-taste”) seven days a week, we do store-sponsored tastings with some sort of program or theme on Tuesdays as well as occasional events on weekends. We recently hosted our second “Wine ‘n Swine” event — two whole pigs, eight wines to taste with ’em. And after thirteen years of insisting on being the only person (with few exceptions) to pour wine at tastings, I’m giving in. We are starting to invite winemakers and proprietors (not, however, marketing/sales managers) to come and pour their wares. We recently welcomed Juanjo Galcera Pinol of Vinos Pinol in Terra Alta, Spain and Nicolas Jaboulet. And we had a South African wine dinner a few weeks ago. We do an annual wine tasting in Patterson Park at sunset on the Thursday before Memorial Day.