Three Cheers for Wine & Cheese: Say Cheese! Wine & Cheese Shop

By: Around Town, Food, June 2023, Wine, Local Foodie

If you know your gouda from your gorgonzola, you have a new reason to visit downtown West Reading. Say Cheese! Restaurant has expanded its operations to the building next door and has reopened its cheese shop in the new space. The original cheese shop, which shared space with the restaurant, was replaced by a bar after the pandemic shutdown in 2020, when Say Cheese! received a liquor license.

Open since October 2022, the new store is larger than the original shop and sells wine and other gourmet products in addition to cheese. The gutted and renovated space maintains interesting features of the original building, such as display alcoves that originally formed a breezeway between the two buildings that now house the restaurant and the shop. The store and restaurant spaces remain connected, creating an integrated dining and shopping experience for the cheese aficionado.

Say Cheese! Wine and Cheese Shop offers a vast selection of cheeses handpicked by owner Adam Cocuzza. Manager Melanie Pomerantz explains that the cheeses will be continuously updated based on customer interest, seasonality and local availability. The shop aims to be responsive to customer requests. For example, Say Cheese! recently returned coconut cheese, a vegan cheese made from coconut milk, to its shelves by popular demand. Pomerantz says, “I’m having a lot of fun researching and selecting the cheeses and wines, and I can vouch for everything in the store.”

Say Charcuterie

Say Cheese! also sells cheese and charcuterie boards and party trays. Exacting party planners can bring in their own boards and fill them with cheese to their specifications. Pomerantz says that the staff are happy to help customers select an array of cheeses and other accoutrements that complement one another. Say Cheese! sells a variety of high-end artisanal items to include on a cheeseboard, such as pickles, local honey, nuts, crackers, chocolates and drink mixers.

Wines Go Global

In addition to cheese, the new store offers an array of local and global wines not available at state liquor stores, including natural wines, biodynamic wines and de-alcoholized wines for the sober curious. De-alcoholized wines are made by removing the alcohol after fermentation, meaning that the taste and feel of wine is maintained. Pomerantz recommends that diners at nearby Penn Avenue restaurants without liquor licenses stop by Say Cheese! to purchase a bottle of wine to have with dinner.

Customers who aren’t hungry can purchase cheese-related utensils, like cheeseboards and knives; books, like Cheese Sex Death: A Bible for the Cheese Obsessed by Erika Kubik; and novelty items, like cheese hats.

For more indecisive customers, Say Cheese! offers free samples of cheese at all times and will be hosting wine tastings on the third Thursday of every month from 5:30 to 8pm. Classes on wine pairings are announced on the Say Cheese! email list and linked on the Say Cheese! website (saycheese-restaurant.com). Regular customers can join the rewards program and accumulate points for discounts on future purchases.