These days we turn four years old, and as this is a two-headed wine store, we have decided to tell you our impressions and the balance of what it has meant all this time. Read our messages!
Words from Luke
Four years! Can you believe it? Well, of course you can! Roque and I have have weathered storm after storm – a new business, a global pandemic, a winter blizzard that stopped the city, the lack of tourism – but we are still here.
As long as nothing else happens -touch wood- we are really looking forward to our fifth year and are in the most consolidated position yet. We have around 2000 reviews across our online booking platforms, were published in both articles, magazines and books as a reference point for wine in Madrid, and are known around the world for our ridiculous podcast.
That isn’t to say it’s been easy. I have more grey hair and more lost hairs in four years than Barack Obama in his first term, but it has been worth it. To see our brand grow so fast, to be invited onto national radio, to have people visit us even to just say hello and take photos, it’s beautiful.
There’s a long road ahead, filled with many projects, many ideas, and of course, many wines. And we hope you all come along with us for the adventure.
Words from Roque
It’s been four years already, my God. Who’d have thought it? And it all started that night when I was coming back from one of the wine tastings Luke and I had started doing. Airbnb had contacted us a few months earlier. They were about to kick off their “Experiences” and someone from the company had listened to our Spanish Wine Experience podcast (which even today, six years later we are still recording), and it had occurred to them that we could offer some guided tastings focused on Spanish wine. We were one of the first 10 experiences with which Airbnb started in Spain. Today we are in the top Experiences of the company in Madrid.
Well, that night I noticed an old commercial space for rent near Plaza Mayor and thought: how nice it would be to have our own spot where we could offer tastings and not have to be going from bar to bar, always looking for a table and at the mercy of the good mood or not of the waiters. It would also be the perfect place to sell the wine we liked.
I talked to Luke and a few months later we were raising the shutter of our store on Duque de Rivas Street. And we couldn’t be prouder. I remember we started with about 35 or 40 different wines… between each bottle there was a space where we could probably fit another bottle. But we didn’t care, we were just starting out. Our most expensive wine only cost 30 euros and our knees were shaking when we saw a bottle of champagne. Now our catalog exceeds 700 references and we love champagne.
We continue to move forward and grow along with the wonderful community of friends that has grown up around Madrid & Darracott. That community is the most precious treasure Luke and I have found after all this time. It has not been an easy four years, neither for us or anyone else who has set up a business. No one warned us of the long hours, that our lives were going to change completely. But neither did COVID appear in the script, nor wave No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, …. How many waves have we already had? Neither did Filomena, nor the transport strike, nor inflation, nor the shortage of glass bottles, nor my meniscus tear that kept me in bed for a month (did I tell you how I tore it?).
We are lucky to have learned that the best wine is not the most expensive, nor the rarest, nor the one everyone talks about. We know that the best wine is the one that, whatever it costs, you can share with the people you really care about. That’s why, surrounded by our customers and friends, we find the energy to face new challenges and overcome new obstacles. That wonderful community of friends who accompany and support us, with whom we taste wine every Thursday in our Inside the Bottle, or those who accompany us on visits to the wineries, or those who have made us part of their lives. To all of you, thank you for these four years.
