Paradise Wines & Spirits
105-2 Elm Street
Old Saybrook, CT

Square footage: 7,600

Years in operation: 11 years

By Sara Capozzi

Offering a diverse selection of wines in an accessible location on Elm Street, Paradise Wines & Spirits has become a destination store for the town of Old Saybrook and beyond.

The shop is owned by Dave Galanto, who has spent his career in the package store industry. He grew up working in his father’s liquor store on Main Street in Middletown and purchased his first store, Middletown’s Metro Wine & Spirits, in 1979. He owned the store for 35 years until he and his wife, Kathy, relocated to the Connecticut shoreline in 2014, when he sold Metro Wine & Spirits and bought the business that would become Paradise Wines & Spirits.

Today, Galanto oversees Paradise with the help of Manager Jesse Lombard, who runs the store daily with a team of seven employees. All work to serve the shop’s dedicated customer base, which includes not just locals but retirees over 60 and boaters and vacationers from New York and Massachusetts who return every year to the Connecticut River meets Long Island Sound town.

Galanto said Paradise is a “wine-driven store,” carrying a plentiful number of SKUs from both big-name and boutique wineries, and many unique bottles line its shelves. The shop’s customer base gravitates toward wines from California, Italy and France in the mid-priced range. “We focus a little more on smaller wineries,” he said. “We try to get the good value wines that are out there for the price.

“California wine is definitely what most of the crowd is used to drinking, until you get to the more sophisticated drinker who comes in looking for Italian or French … and there are a lot of Italians in Old Saybrook looking for Italian wines,” Galanto said. “[Italian] wines such as Barolo, Brunello, Chianti and Pinot Grigio sell well.

“We try every bottle of wine that comes through the door … people are always looking for new wines to try,” he said. “So, you have to keep them in the sweet spot, like nowadays the sweet spot is $20 to $25 here. Five years ago, it was $15 to $20. So, that sweet spot keeps going up. But there’s still some good values out there, especially in the Spanish market. There’s a lot of good Spanish wines out there that have very good values and also Australia.”

Lombard said he’s currently working to expand the shop’s high-end wine selection in response to what regulars continue to gravitate toward. He noted that while, nationally, wine sales have been trending lower, fine wine sales at Paradise have continued to increase.

Customers will also find a plentiful craft beer selection in Paradise’s Beer Cave and other chilled selections behind its 50 cooler doors, including some of the store’s most popular categories: ready-to-drink cocktails and THC seltzers. Paradise has a big craft beer following and posts its in-stock beers online on Untappd and BeerMenus daily so that customers know which brews they’ll be able to find in-store.

A vast collection of spirits—including the popular categories of allocated bourbons and high-end tequilas—await. The store offers its own cocktail kits, which are a hit with shoppers, especially in the summer months, according to Lombard.

The Paradise team hosts in-store product tastings every weekend and offers delivery services to customers in the Old Saybrook area. And in the near future, Galanto and Lombard said they plan to begin offering wine education classes for the shop’s many wine enthusiasts.