Stories indexed with the term ‘Village Corner’

For over 40 years, Ann Arbor wine retailer Village Corner was a fixture on South University, near the University of Michigan’s Central Campus, until it closed last November to make way for a student high-rise at 601 S. Forest.

Dick Scheer, an iconic figure in Michigan wine circles, owned the store that entire time. When it closed, Scheer stashed his inventory in temporary quarters, took his Terminator turn – “I’ll be back!” – and pledged to reopen shortly in a venue with better parking, as he told Sandra Silfven of the Detroit News.

Then, nothing. Scheer went to ground, keeping his own counsel as he sought a new location, to the not-infrequent exasperation of long-time customers and members of the media alike.

Until last week, when the website of Michigan’s Liquor Control Commission (LCC) spilled the beans: on March 17, Village Corner applied to relocate its beverage licenses to another campus-adjacent address.

North Campus, that is.

The new location, at 1747 Plymouth Road in The Courtyard Shops, sits between No Thai! restaurant and Jet’s Pizza, in a storefront formerly occupied by Tanfastic tanning salon. [Full Story]

Two charter members of the Vinous Posse dropped by the other day, carrying a treasure from their cellar.

It wasn’t a bottle of wine. They were carefully coddling a copy of the Holiday Wine Catalog from Ann Arbor’s Village Corner – circa 1977.

A quick flip through its pages elicited a classic “AHA!” moment: the eye-opening realization that my 401(k) might be riding significantly higher in the water if its early-on stock acquisitions consisted of Château Lafite and Château Latour, instead of GM and Citigroup.

Of course, that assumes my forbearance from indulging in too many celebratory pours out of the profits.

Like many long-term collectors of less-than-opulent means, I frequently joke that I can’t afford to drink the older wines in my cellar, let alone replace them at today’s prices. The price run-up among first-tier wines over the last 20 years has been little short of breathtaking.

But it wasn’t until I saw Village Corner’s price tag on a 1967 Château Mouton Rothschild – $21.95 – and compared it to the $600 tab on the soon-to-be-released 2006 vintage that it struck me how many years I may have been making wrong-headed investments. [Full Story]