Church Street Wine Shoppe Moving to the Historic Humphreys–Rogers House

Church Street Wine Shoppe made history by starting the first sitdown wine club in Alabama.

But, now with 600 members, the shop is overflowing at its original location on Church Street downtown.

Owners Stephanie Kennedy-Mell and her husband Matthew Mell are moving the shop, the wine club and their entire Church Street Family restaurant headquarters into the historic Humphreys-Rogers House on the corner of Gates Avenue and Fountain Circle. It will be known as Church Street on Gates.

Built in 1848, the Humphreys-Rogers House has been moved and saved from demolition in recent years and is the only historic house in downtown Huntsville’s business zone.

Listed on the Historic Register, the two-story, 4,000 square-foot mansion is a welcomed expansion from the business’s small location on Church Street. The ground floor corridor, foyer, and formal living room will house the bottle shoppe, serving wine and craft beer. A private room will be dedicated to wine club members.

Upstairs will house the Church Street Family headquarters for all five restaurant venues: Pourhouse and Mazzara’s Italian restaurant, both at Stovehouse; Purveyor at the Avenue; and the new Catacomb Speakeasy opening before Labor Day in the basement of the Downtown Self Storage at 100 Jefferson Street.

“There will be plenty of parking with the city parking garage right across the street,” said Kennedy-Mell. “Pre-pandemic, our Church Street location could only seat 40 people, which was already problematic for our wine club, which meets once a month. We were holding 13 separate wine club meetings to accommodate our 600 members, and during the pandemic, we had adjusted that to 20 meetings of 20 people.

“We also had to close the bottle shoppe down to the public during the meetings, but we will no longer have to do that.”

The Church Street Wine Shoppe wine club is the only wine club in Alabama to offer five-course, sitdown wine tastings with chef-prepared food pairings and guest speakers, sometimes flown in from wine country around the world like California, France, and Argentina. They will also offer first estate wines.

While the Church Street location is only open for dinner, the new bar and bottle shoppe will be open for lunch and dinner, and will bring back popular customer events such as Wine Love Wednesday. They can also hold larger tasting events like the ones they hold twice a year at Purveyor.

Kennedy-Mell will hold a press conference at the landmark location in October, with tours of the new premises as a prelude to an expected December opening.