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After 13 years, Urban Grape closes in the South End
"We will gather around our tasting table again, Boston. You can count on it."
A beloved South End wine shop has closed after 13 years in the neighborhood.
On Wednesday, Urban Grape owners TJ and Hadley Douglas announced the closure on Instagram.
According to the post, negotiations with their lender, Cambridge Savings Bank, had deteriorated over the last week, leaving the shop with no choice but to close. The news comes after Urban Grape closed its Washington D.C. location on Aug. 31.
“In a city like Boston, where too often we all retreat to our corners, our legacy was bringing everyone together around one table. We succeeded in building a new kind of wine store that meant so much to so many,” Douglas wrote in the post.
Hadley Douglas expressed their plan to return in the future.
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“We will gather around our tasting table again, Boston. You can count on it,” she wrote on Instagram.
According to the post, Urban Grape has held over 1,500 wine tasting events and sold nearly $50 million worth of wine, spirits, and beer. The wine shop has also won several awards including Boston magazine’s Best of Boston, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and US Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year.
The Black-owned and woman-owned store was known for championing diversity in the wine industry. In 2020, it created the The Urban Grape Wine Studies Award for Students of Color, an award that provided its 12 recipients the tools necessary to launch a wine career.
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The company received support from several other small businesses after the announcement.
“So unbelievably sad to see @urbangrape announce its closure today. TJ and Hadley built something so remarkable, truly inclusive, and quite frankly entirely lacking in the wine world,” wrote Culture Wine Co. on Instagram.
Black Owned Bos. commented, “You’ve created a legacy that will last far beyond any 4 walls. Thank you for everything you’ve done for our community and being a day 1 supporter. Wishing you all the best for whatever is next. Confident this isn’t the end of this story.”
Urban Grape was also known for the community it fostered at its tastings.
“We opened The Urban Grape to build community through beverage, and oh, how we have done that. We’ve lost track of the number of people who have met at our tastings and gone on to get married, then brought their new babies back to those same tastings. We’ve mourned with beloved customers who have lost a spouse, and turned to us for a bottle of wine to toast their memory,” Douglass wrote.
The post urged readers to follow its Instagram and subscribe to its Substack newsletter, The Second Bottle, to follow along as the couple rebuilds.
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Boston.com reached out to Urban Grape for more details, but didn’t hear back in time for publication.
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