Growing up in a French household, Jerome Dubois has always been comfortable around Camembert, Brie, and a full variety of cheeses, as well as wine, given his family hails from the Bordeaux region. So when the opportunity to buy specialty food and beverage shop The Spirited Gourmet presented itself, he jumped at the opportunity.
“I grew up saying a lot of weird French words and eating a lot of weird, French things – cheeses, and we always had red wine at the table … it was all about food,” Dubois said, noting how important gathering around the table was. “Thankfully, our family enjoys eating as well. We really celebrate food, not just the consumption of it, but what it means in terms of building a community, bringing friends together, bringing family together, creating experiences, the holidays, mid-week meals, that kind of stuff.”
After six months of conversations and administrative work with the town, Dubois officially acquired the business in April.
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“To have the opportunity to move forward with something like this … I just felt very comfortable,” he said.
Now he wants to welcome the Belmont and surrounding communities around tasting tables at The Spirited Gourmet, with opportunities to try and learn about wines. The tastings are offered every Friday and most Saturdays, with wine and sparkling wine from a variety of regions.
Dubois said there is a strong Italian influence, given the heritage of the original store owners, Chris Benoit and Elena Leahy, but that the wine selection spans the globe – as does the food on offer. And while one can find their fair share of French cheeses, from Comte to Tomme to “things they’ve never seen or tried before,” Dubois said they can just as easily find delicious domestic cheeses from the Northwest to Wisconsin, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.
They’re also offering beer and other beverage tastings. As Dubois noted, the “world of beer has exploded in the last 10 to 15 years,” and its presence in the store has subsequently grown.
Dubois quickly credits his knowledgeable staff, many of whom have been with the company for years.
“Our staff is incredibly trained, we have amazing tenure, some of the folks have been here 10 to 12 years,” Dubois said. “They know the product, they help select the product, they consume the product – they’re huge fans of it. So, when you walk in, it’s easy for them to ask a couple of questions of you and then, boom, lead you to the right thing right away.”
He thinks of them as guides taking patrons through the selection process.
Laura Maloney, the general manager who runs their food department, is trained and certified in cheeses and has been with the Spirited Gourmet for 11 years. Their wine director, John Mooradian, has worked there for seven years.
“Both Laura and John are big reasons why people come to the shop because they feel like they’re getting a unique experience,” Dubois said, noting that Mooradian discusses each of the sampled wines with the entire staff after the tastings in order to impart additional knowledge that they can then use to better guide customers.
Their level of expertise does not come at the expense of approachability.
“We don’t want this to be a pretentious place,” said Dubois’ fiancée, Nikole Roome. “We are providing you with a curated set of things to pick from and you don’t have to think too much about it. [We] might carry tons of wines that you’ve never seen or tasted before, but you don’t feel silly asking the staff here.”
According to Roome, learning about new wines and what resonates for each customer is part of the joy of coming into the store. Someone might take a new type of wine home after having sampled it, and then come back for more.
“Whether you’re barbecuing or having friends over or just want to have a special bottle of wine for that impromptu occasion … it’s important for people to feel comfortable when they come in and leave with an additional bit of knowledge,” she said. “Their palate grows also.”
In addition to their small weekly tastings, patrons have an opportunity to broaden their wine palates at The Spirited Gourmet’s biannual grand tastings, where they can sample 35 wines spread over seven tables. They just hosted the spring grand tasting in May, welcoming 150 visitors to the shop to taste the wines, socialize, and learn about the selection.
First of Its Kind
The Spirited Gourmet has a special history in the town as Belmont’s first wine shop 17 years ago. Along with restaurants Savino’s and Il Casale, which were the first restaurants to serve wine, Dubois said it “brought a whole new experience to Belmont.”
The experience includes a deli, added right before the pandemic, boasting a large assortment of meats from spicy Basque salami to speck and fresh, house-made tuna salad, with the staff imparting what Dubois calls their “own artisanal creativity” into the foods that they serve.
“You can leave here with a whole meal to prep,” Roome said, sharing examples including produce, yogurt from Sophia’s, Crescent Ridge milk, premade meals, fine cheese from Italy, and Porter from Lamplighter Brewing Co. that often make their way into customers’ hauls home.
While Dubois and Roome are serious about continuing The Spirited Gourmet’s legacy and maintaining much of the existing signature details of the shop, they have some updates planned – from physical, in-store customizations like the lighting and adding tables and chairs, to modernizing some of their online systems in order to increase awareness for their products.
Longtime Belmont residents with three children in the school system, they’re also looking forward to doing more with the Belmont community, from working with the local farmers market to art organizations and local businesses, creating “food awareness nights” and other collaborations to better get to know and serve Belmont residents.
They also have ideas for showcasing products from the farmer’s market in their store.
“We want to make this a neighborhood destination,” said Dubois. “We want to make this a Belmont destination for Cushing Square, for all of Belmont.”
