Activity invigorates wine-shop owner

Trina Wentzel co-owns a wine store and writes tasting notes for every bottle in the store. So what's her beverage of choice during a night on the town?

"Just give me something," she tells the bartender at the Town Talk Diner in Minneapolis, the gleam in her brown eyes aptly reflecting her ardor for new experiences. This, after all, is a woman who has penned wine-pairing notes for State Fair foods, whose New Year's resolution is to re-learn how to ride a bike ("You know how they say you can't forget how to do that? Well, I forgot"), and who seems not at all worn out from dealing with two sets of kids: the five she and her husband, Paul, are raising and her English students at Mounds Park Academy.

Ask Wentzel, 36, about her favorite aspects of the two jobs, and the answers are strikingly, and tellingly, similar.

At her school: "It's a cliché, but it's the kids. Anyone who says otherwise is probably there for the wrong reason. They make me cry, they make me laugh. I adore them."

At her store, the Wine Thief in St. Paul: "The people. I love wine, but I expected that there would be difficult situations with customers, and occasionally with distributors. But in two years we've only had one negative experience with a customer and none with a distributor."

It would seem that rearing five young 'uns and holding down two jobs apiece -- Paul works full time at the store and one night a week at First Avenue in Minneapolis, where he's been a fixture for two decades -- would be numbing. But "we're pretty smooth-running," she said, and all that activity actually seems to invigorate them. Trina positively beams when talking about their many nights out, whether the agenda is Paul's pursuit of the Twin Cities' best burger (current leader: Casper & Runyon's Nook in St. Paul), youngest child Zoe's favorite meal (chocolate-chip pancakes at Maria's Café in Minneapolis) or an "adult night."

"We do like to get out as a couple. Just having that time out to look at each other and go, 'Wow, how are you?' is pretty wonderful," said Wentzel, between bites of sweet-potato risotto. "And discovering new restaurants or enjoying familiar haunts, and sharing them with friends and loved ones, is really my idea of an ideal evening. It's about food, it's about music and it's about friends.

And what about the wine?

"When I go out with my girlfriends, they know better than to ask me to order the wine. We just all order for ourselves," Wentzel said. "Wine is supposed to be fun. The worst meals out are when you're with other wine people, and that's the only topic of conversation."

Going after 'our demographic'

Still, the Wentzels' passion for the fruit of the wine is what led them to open their store on St. Clair Avenue. They spent years enjoying and learning about wine, but their biggest lesson was this: "We just got to a point," she said, "where we said, 'We need to open a store that understands our demographic.'"

That would be youngish, bargain-minded and unfettered by any conventional wisdom or rules about wine. With Paul serving as "the face of the store" and Trina as its voice, the Wentzels encourage customers to try bottles from unfamiliar grapes and places. Each wine's handwritten shelf card reflects their enjoy-and-don't-take-this-too-seriously mind-set.

Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising, given her heritage, that Wentzel brings such an enthusiastic, hospitable bearing to her work and play. She's half Japanese, half Irish -- her maiden name is KaTrina Akiko Doyle -- and she hesitates only a bit before describing what she inherited from each side of the family.

"I'd say I got a sense of graciousness from the Japanese side," she said, "and from my dad's Irish side I got the ability to hunt for a bargain and a sense of humor.

"But I don't have the stereotypical Irish temper, thank goodness."