We’ve made a lot of new friends and met a lot of people in our first year here at the Grape Life and invariably people ask us these questions,

Q. What made you decide to open the Grape Life

Jim: Whenever we traveled we always enjoyed finding nice little wine bars or lounges where we could drink a great bottle or glass of wine, sit and talk, meet new people and just watch the world go by.

Nancy: Yeah, and we always said, "Wow, wouldn't it be nice if we had some place like this in the Quad Cities?" So, when Jim was looking for a career change, I told him he should think about opening a store and lounge here or, you know, do something he was passionate about.

Jim: I thought about it and I went back to her and said, "Well dear, we don't have enough money to open a golf course, the motorcycle dealerships are already taken and I don't think the city is going to let me open up a bordello...so, the next thing on the passion scale is wine."

Q. How did you come up with the overall concept for this?

Jim: As what I would call novice wine drinkers, we knew how it felt to go into a place and be intimidated by all the different kinds of wine and not always knowing whether we would like it or not.

Nancy: We spent a lot of money on wine we ended up not liking.

Jim: So we organized the wines in tastes groups, or lifestyles as we call them, so at the very least the uninitiated could come in and feel fairly confident that they could find something at least along the lines of what they like.

Nancy: The second thought on that was that we wanted people to be able to try some wines they might not otherwise try, so that's why we decided to do the "taste flights." It gives people a chance to try three different wines and not have to pay a lot for them.

Q. You've been open a year. How's it going so far?

Jim: From a business standpoint, I think pretty good. All things, like the economy, considered we are certainly ahead of where we expected to be after our first year.

Nancy: We've got great customers and we've made a lot of new friends. That's been very rewarding.

Jim: Yeah, people seem to love it. I think we really found a niche here. Wine sales across the country are on the rise and I think that wave is just hitting the Midwest and the Quad Cities. Thankfully, there seem to be a lot of "winos" like us out there!