Bern’s Fine Wines & Spirits

I prefer to purchase my wine and/​or alcohol here because of the ease of convenience. There are designated parking spots for the Wine Shop so you don’t need to valet park. The staff is friendly, helpful, and willing to quickly educate you if you need any assistance in choosing a wine.
I also am happy I can purchase Bern’s Steak House Gift Cards at Bern’s Fine Wine and Spirits so that I don’t have to deal with the hassle of running into the restaurant.
Don’t forget to sign up for their email list to be informed of their frequent tastings, special events, and sales.

Bern’s Fine Wines & Spirits is a small wine and liquor shop located in the in the lobby of the Epicurean Hotel in South Tampa. The wine shop is absolutely gorgeous and carries an excellent selection of intriguing and hard-​to-​find wine and liquors. You won’t find the big box brands at this unique store.
I’ve stopped by Bern’s Fine Wines on several occasions and always enjoy discussing wines with the staff. If you are looking to add some interesting wines or liquors to your collection or are searching for an impressive gift check out Bern’s Fine Wines & Spirits.
A schedule of free wine tastings and «Crush Hours» are available online:

Tampa has some very excellent places to buy a nice bottle of wine, and also to spend some quality time chatting with extremely knowledgeable wine experts. I’ve always found the incredible wine cellar at Bern’s Steak House to be the best of the best in town, and so I was quite excited to learn that the Laxer family had recently opened a retail establishment dedicated to educating the public and helping us to purchase fine bottles of wine.
Those who’ve already discovered the decadent pleasures of the Chocolate Pi confectioner’s store at the new Epicurean Hotel are but steps away from the Bern’s Fine Wines & Spirits shop located in the same hotel. The Epicurean is directly across S. Howard Avenue from Bern’s Steak House in South Tampa. If you pull up to the Epicurean’s valet parking station and tell them you’re there to visit the wine shop, they will direct you to some free parking spaces in the garage.
Walk south down Howard Avenue, away from Chocolate Pi (Be strong, Unilocalers. You can do this!) and you’ll discover that the wine shop is about 10 steps away. Inside the doors and you’ll see a vast collection of wines, neatly organized by types and regions, with prices to fit most all budgets. I say «most» because if you’re used to drinking your wine out of cardboard boxes with a plastic screw top that you bought at one of those discount «Club» mega-​marts, then you might want to look elsewhere for your fermented grape juice. Truthfully, they have bottles of wine on display starting at about $ 10 all the way up to hundreds of dollars.
Bern’s offers fine wines, ports, Champagne, spirits and cheeses from around the globe, and their staff has the expertise to help you select the perfect wine to serve for your special occasion. Regardless if you’re an experienced wine aficionado, or a first-​time buyer they can help you to find a wine which will fit your budget and your palate.
The shop has a tasting bar, and that will likely be your first stop to sample a little bit of different reds or whites as they help guide you through the different choices. They’ll ask what you’re planning to serve, and how you plan to prepare your meal — with a heavy sauce, or something lighter. They can recommend some different cheeses to serve at the conclusion of your meal, and then pair that with a superb dessert wine.
Bern’s Fine Wines is definitely the place to visit if you want to learn more about wine, and use that knowledge to prepare a fabulous dinner or maybe assemble a fun wine & cheese party. They offer specialty classes as well as limited edition tastings for their regular customers.

Less than impressed.
A friend of mine received an email from Bern’s Fine Wines regarding a wine tasting and we decided to check into it. We arrived at the address listed on the email (Bern’s Restaurant — 1209 Howard) and valet parked to only be told that the tasting «was perhaps across the street» — minor detail. Once in the wine store we weren’t greeted (which is odd because there were only 2 other people in the store) we walked over to the serving table and still weren’t greeted or acknowledged by the server. So I asked if we could sample some wine and the server unwillingly obliged and mentioned something about only one bottle of wine remaining. No mention was even made of the selection of wine poured for us and we weren’t offered any of the other wines which were clearly available. I’ve had better wine tasting experiences at publix!
Apparently not learning our lesson from all this, we selected three bottles of wine to purchase anyway and waited patiently to check out where yet again a lack of interest and organization caused us to stand and wait for well over 5 minutes until one of the employees behind the counter noticed we were waiting with well over a hundred dollars worth of wine to purchase.
Overall, they do have a good selection of wines but they are items that could be found elsewhere. The reason one goes to this type of establishment is for outstanding service and personal recommendations; neither of which we received. Will I return? Probably not.

Awesome place for wines, spirits, wine tastings & wine dinners. Get on the email list for their special events. If you have any spirits or cocktail questions, ask for Dean. He’s one the US best mixologists