An overlooked niche in Brownsville’s retail wine market has been filled, making available smaller labels not normally found on the shelves of the city’s big wine retailers.
Filling that niche is Dodici Provisions, located at 1375 Palm Blvd. in the former Bates Cleaners building next to Spanky’s Burgers. It’s a spinoff of Dodici Pizza & Wine downtown and owned by two of the restaurant’s partners, Trey Mendez, mayor of Brownsville, and Dante Pensa. The third partner in Dodici Provisions is Michael Pennington, originally from Fort Worth and a wine-industry veteran who serves as the new store’s general manager.
Pennington said in a recent phone interview that the idea is to be Brownsville’s “neighborhood, independently owned wine shop.” Some of the things he learned while working as a wine specialist for Pogo’s Wine & Spirits in Dallas, one of the state’s top high-end wine stores, Pennington is putting to work with the new venture — namely, creating a “truly curated wine shop.”
“We really focus our tastings a lot on education,” he said. “We really like to teach people more about wine, just like on a normal person’s level, so if you’re out of town at a restaurant or another wine shop or whatever that you can at least recognize some things, not necessarily the same labels but at least the same regions and the same grapes and things like that.”
Dodici Provisions, which held its grand opening June 3-4, has wine tastings every Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., Pennington said.
“People can just walk in and taste some new wines that they’ve never had,” he said. “It’s usually done by either region or country or by a specific grape or something like that.”
Pennington’s connections to the wine-import business allow access to some wines that would be difficult to get otherwise, he said, while the shop features wines at nearly all price points.
“We can do pretty much any budget, from $12 to $15 a bottle all the way up to however much money you want to spend,” Pennington said. “If you need a $5,000 bottle of 20-year-old Bordeaux, we can get that for you.”
While the main focus is wine, Dodici Provisions also offers locally sourced gourmet foods such as salsa, beef jerky, raw chocolate and olives, he said.
“I’ve been really blown away by some of these products that I’ve tasted,” Pennington said. “I’ve been very, very impressed by it. I’m a true believer that if you keep local money local it helps everybody out in the community.”
Judging by the number of people stopping by to check out the shop since it opened, there’s plenty of interest in wine in Brownsville even if not a lot in the way of wine education, he said. An exception, Pennington said, is Las Ramblas Hospitality Group, which in December brought on veteran sommelier Vanessa Treviño Boyd as its first beverage director.
The two are good friends, Pennington said, adding that Treviño Boyd is “ridiculously knowledgeable” when it comes to wine.
“I’ve learned a ton from her,” he said. “We’ve actually spoken several times about being able to form more of a real wine-drinking community, not only in Brownsville but just the Lower (Rio Grande) Valley area.”
Dodici Provisions started with more than 125 wine selections and plans to steadily build its inventory until the store is full, Pennington said. One of the first things to know about wine, he noted, is that you don’t have to be rich to access the good stuff.
“You can discover great wines on every level,” Pennington said. “You don’t have to spend $50 to $100 or more on a great bottle of wine. You can find really killer bottles for $20.”
MORE INFORMATION:
Dodici Provisions
1375 Palm Blvd., Brownsville
Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday
Closed Sunday and Monday
(956) 594-5161
