The world of natural wine boasts just a few hot spots around the United States: New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., Chicago, and Austin. It’s a tough business to work in, as importers and distributors with highly allocated bottles can be selective in which markets they sell to. With Vesper Books and Wine, Symantha Duggan and Robert Wilson are part of a movement that’s bringing access to these wines to Detroit, a market that’s long gone overlooked.
Vesper Books and Wine is part-wine bar, part-retail shop, and part-culinary bookstore, with the three separate areas of its space each blending seamlessly into one another.
Vesper began as Duggan’s dream of owning and operating a bookstore that she tinkered with for over a decade. She started her career in office roles across a few different industries — her interest in hospitality only came into the equation after she moved to Paris and fell in love with wine. When she moved back home to Detroit in 2019 and met Wilson, a pedigreed bartender who had helmed some of Detroit’s top cocktail bars, brainstorming for Vesper kicked into high gear.
Finding the location was a stroke of luck. The couple, both natives of the Detroit suburbs, were at a friend’s wedding when someone mentioned to Duggan that he owned a 19th-century building that once housed a Detroit Savings Bank. “It was a hyper-Detroit experience. Like, of course I would sit next to someone at a wedding that owns an old bank.”
The two spent the years leading up to Vesper’s opening in 2024 raising capital and renovating the space themselves with the help of some friends, artists, and an architect. Together, they built the retail store and bar on loans and grants. Elements of the former bank remain intact in the revamped space: Check-writing counters are now bar seats, and the old vault is now a private seating area.
From the start, Vesper aimed to bring something new to the city. Whether the by-the-glass list features a pour of Jean Foillard Beaujolais-Villages or a Marquette from Michigan, Wilson, who curates the shop’s wine selection, wants customers to learn something new each time they walk in.
“Michigan is a tough state to order in,” he says. “There are very few items available to us, so having an obscure bottle selection takes a lot of work. We want to introduce wines to people that they’re not normally going to see, like an Uruguayan orange.”
As much as the two want Vesper to bring new, unfamiliar wine and books to Detroit, Wilson and Duggan are also intentional about fitting into the store’s neighborhood. Detroit suffers from one of the highest poverty rates in the U.S., and the couple wants to be cognizant of serving the people in their community first and foremost.
Vesper Books and Wine is in Detroit’s Core City neighborhood, where the median household income is around $35,000, Duggan says. She and Wilson work tooth and nail to keep prices reasonable.
“We spend hours, hours, and hours each week, scouring through catalogs and magazines to make sure that what we have on our menu and on our shelves is of the highest quality, is accessible in language and in knowledge, and also meets the price point as much as we possibly can in today’s age,” she says.
Duggan, who spearheads the shop’s cookbook selection, also makes an effort to represent the many diasporas that make up Detroit’s ethnic fabric with what she stocks on the store’s shelves. Whereas the city is riddled with chain bookstores selling tens of thousands of titles, she wants Vesper’s point of view to be unabashedly Detroit.
The venue’s three prongs — wine bar, wine retail, and cookbook store — converge to become a “third space” for Detroiters. Vesper facilitates a Cookbook Club, which sends members individually selected recipe books and hosts potluck-style events where they can share featured dishes. Duggan and Wilson also put on book signings and pop-ups with high-profile food media personalities, such as Carla Lalli and Jon Kung, and small-production winemakers like Brent Mayeaux of Stagiaire Wine.
Though it’s just a year and a half old, Vesper has already amassed a wide audience of regulars, out-of-town visitors, wine-interested, and cookbook enthusiasts alike. While there’s still more ground to cover, Detroit’s once-disregarded wine presence is gaining steam: The city has seen the addition of acclaimed wine bars like Ladder 4 and Bar Chenin over the past several years, and it’s only poised to keep growing.
“We’re hitting a gateway right now where things are changing in the wine and books industry in Michigan,” Duggan says. “Wine is becoming more appreciated and available, and there are more niche books that are becoming available too. Now is the time.”
