Business & Tech

Winetiques Offers Collection of Wine Antiques

Mark Barlow's showroom filled to the brim with wine collectibles, decanters, glasses, accessories.

The only hint of what lay behind the doors of a plain brick office building off Old Peachtree Road is a stylized sign: The seductive curve of a wine glass. 

Inside the showroom in nearby Norcross is one of the largest collections of wine antiques in the world: A metal wine container from the French Army labeled “Vin,” an empty bottle of 1906 Chablis, bottle stoppers of all imaginable shapes, piles of old corkscrews that dare to make the new contraptions look inelegant.

This is Mark Barlow’s wine-loving wonderland. The crammed front showroom is the Wine Accessories Mart, which is by appointment only, where you’ll find collectibles, stemware and other completely unique accessories to buy. In the other rooms and warehouse, Barlow runs his other business Finest Event Rentals, a rental service for flatware and other catering goods.

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Barlow became inspired when he travelled to Europe, noticing that even a small corner café would give its food the respect of quality dishes. “I want to carry on the European tradition here,” he said one afternoon in his madcap showroom, which is stuffed to the brim with interesting bits.

Barlow went to international trade shows in Europe, and then became a representative of a European company in the United States and then a distributor, which he still is.

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Barlow said the pinnacle of his career was hosting an International Corkscrew Collectors Association convention here in Atlanta. He pulls a mini encyclopedia of corkscrews out of a corner—and a simple, antique design out of his pocket. The entire corkscrew folds into a convenient tube, which he likes because it travels well. “It is interesting that we have reverted to antique corkscrews,” he says. Well, at least he has.

He doesn’t consider himself an expert, but he can talk wine for hours.

What does a complete novice need to enhance their wine tasting experience? Three things, says Barlow: varietal specific glasses, a decanting apparatus and a proper corkscrew.

If I buy a nice wine glass, one large enough to let the wine open up and breath, how do I keep myself from breaking it? Easy, he says, immediately after you are done drinking, put the wine glass in the dishwasher. The number one way people break glasses is washing them by hand after they’ve been drinking. Makes sense.

 


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