Next door to The Public House on Adams Street, a new wine bar an out-of-the-ordinary and all-natural experience to its guests.
Neighbors Natural Wine and Bottle Shop, which serves all-natural beverages and hand-crafted food, opened in mid-September inside the Shearer Building, located at the corner of Center Avenue and Adams Street in Downtown Bay City.
Lyndsay Edmonds, who owns both Neighbors and
The Public House, says the new wine bar offers something not found anywhere else in town.
“In business, I think the things you want in your community you have to create,” says Edmonds, who also owns
Harless + Hugh Coffee at 1003 Washington Ave.
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Graphic courtesy of Neighbors Natural Wine and Bottle ShopNeighbors Natural Wine and Bottle ShopWith each business, Edmonds has intentionally sought to create something new in Bay City.
Harless + Hugh opened in 2012.
“Thirteen years ago, we didn’t have specialty coffee. Yes, we had a lot of coffee, but we didn’t have coffee like Harless + Hugh,” she says.
In 2017, Edmonds opened The Public House at 811 Adams St., where bartenders create craft cocktails by juicing fresh citrus and cutting their own ice cubes.
A few years later, in 2019, Edmonds opened a short-term rental upstairs from the coffee house, calling it “
The Loft.”
The new wine bar is tucked into what was James Shearer’s personal office in the late 1800s.
The businesses each have the same goal.
“The idea is really to create a space for people to enjoy beverages, and in major cities, craft cocktails, natural wine bars, and awesome coffee shops exist, but we didn’t have that,” she says.
Edmonds says the emphasis is less on getting food and drinks out the door, but offering “something that’s been touched by human hands, and that’s not terrible for you.”
Ultimately, the focus is on small business and small family farms.
Neighbors Natural Wines and Bottle Shop features wines made from grapes grown without fertilizers or pesticides. The wine business supports grape growers.
“They’re either organic, sustainable, or biodynamic, are the three categories for natural wine,” she says. Biodynamic means the farmers followed the lunar schedule, or the Old Farmer’s Almanac, growing crops when it’s best for the grapes.
“There’s nothing conventional,” she adds, explaining there are no big box farms or heavy machinery involved in the winemaking.
“These are farmers hands touching every grape, every vine. There are a lot of small family farms and it’s wines from across the world.”
Most of the wines are from Northern Michigan, Edmonds adds, “where obviously the best grapes are being harvested in Michigan.” Michigan wines come from places such as Old Mission Peninsula, Elk Rapids, and Petoskey.
Other wines come from all over the world, including the tiny country of Georgia located at the intersection of Asia and Europe.
“A lot of those countries are so poor,” she says. “For instance, we have a sweet red wine on our menu from the country of Georgia. And it's a natural wine essentially because the country is so poor that they can't even afford pesticides and fertilizers.”
There’s more than beverages at Neighbors. Edmonds says the wine bar serves food from the same menu as Public House. Though there is a brick wall separating the two businesses, they also share the same hours.
On Sunday, while Public House has a brunch, Neighbors has donuts and coffee until 2 p.m. The Slow Sunday Coffee Club is open to anyone who wants to stop by for a good, sustainably sourced cup of coffee and a fresh pastry.
Each of the establishments was designed with comfort in mind.
“There’s a gas fireplace that’s original to James Shearer’s office and people love to sit in the cozy upholstered chairs, grab and drink, and just sit there and relax,” she says.
“I think the idea of business is creating the things that you want in your community. So it's like I love natural wine. I hope the community loves natural wine, but not everything is for profit in my eyes. It's very intentional of I want to go drink natural wine or I want an awesome cup of coffee.”