Brandi Carter is ready.
Her employees are ready.
Bottles are on the shelves and the pictures are hung.
Everything is ready, except the final paperwork from the City of Jackson.
She, along with Elvie’s owner Hunter Estes and Cody McCain, are opening new natural specialty wine store, which is in the former Bridal Path location in Jackson’s Banner Hall next to Broad Street Baking Company and below Lemuria.
Carter, one of the owners of Levure, will be running the day-to-day operations, and also is beverage director and sommelier at Elvie’s, co-creator of Good Bar, and curated the Mayflower’s wine list.
Brandi Carter, co-owner of Levure, is working toward the opening of the natural wine shop at Banner Hall in Jackson on Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. She hopes the shop will be open before Christmas.
What is natural wine
According to Carter, natural wine begins with farming that is regenerative, organic or biodynamic, has minimal intervention in the winemaking process, and is made by people who are passionate about what they make and why they make it.
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“A friend that really believes in what natural wine is and who it impacts walked me through wines they were excited about every time we got together,” Carter said. “As I read books and dove deeper into the tech sheets of natural producers and in general just enjoyed the vibrancy of the wines. I reached a point where I couldn’t go back.”
What is taking so long?
Levure was expected to open by mid-November at the latest, but problems with zoning and business licenses with the City of Jackson have taken longer than expected.
Now, Carter says she could open some time this week, but that she has had that same expectation the last few weeks.
She started the process in January of getting the property re-zoned after having decided in the fall of 2023 they wanted to be in Banner Hall.
By June, Levure was given a temporary use permit.
Then came the business application process.
“We already had alcohol in the store and had everything lined up that I wanted in the store,” Carter said. “We thought our business license would only take a couple of weeks.”
Multiple complications and a couple of months later, she has her fingers crossed that she can open any day.
“We have to start selling wine before Christmas,” said Carter, who is a native of Meridian. “We just do. We are hoping this week.”
Already a challenge
Because of the nature of selling specialty wines in Mississippi, Carter was already going to have challenges to face, because of the restrictions of the Mississippi Alcohol and Beveridge Commission.
“Anything that is slightly unique is special order because of how much you have to buy. It gets pretty technical,” Carter said. “I find specific producers that I do want to sell their wine and then either we will purchase that $1,000 minimum as Elvie’s and put them in our wine clubs as first-to-market or I will contact the different sommeliers in Mississippi or different retailers around the state and ask them to grab a case here and there just to meet that initial minimum.”
Passion project
Carter said that after realizing how closely natural wine aligned with the sourcing and execution for the food and bar side of Elvie’s where she had worked for many years, they decided to change the wine program to match.
“Natural and low intervention wine supports small producers and is made to best represent the vineyards and farmers it started with,” Carter said. “It took nearly two years of working with our incredible local brokers and chipping away at bringing in new wines to reach a fully natural wine list at Elvie’s. Another two years later, there are more available to the state than we can fit in our shop at once.”
Now, she needs to get the final approval.
Ross Reily is a writer for the Clarion Ledger, part of the USA TODAY Network. He can be reached at rreily@gannett.com or 601-573-2952. You can follow him on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter @GreenOkra1.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Specialty wine store in Banner Hall in Jackson, MS is on hold