Bottle Stop wine bar offers local food and drinks in Occoquan

The Bottle Stop Wine Bar and Shop, located in Occoquan, offers a mixture of local artisan drinks and small tapas style food plates for a unique dining experience.

Owned by Emil and Kim Wigode, the wine bar opened up a year and a half ago.

The Wigodes previously owned the Old Dominion Wine Shop on Mill Street in Occoquan for 5 years, before deciding to expand into a new location with a wine bar.

“We really saw a lack of a place where you could have some good wine, whiskey, craft beer – and not necessarily large plates of food, but smaller platers of food that pair well… there just isn’t a lot of that in the Woodbridge area, especially Occoquan. We were trying to fill that niche,” said Emil Wigode.

For their alcoholic beverages, they pride themselves on feature local and small production artisan beverages.

“[We have] wines you’re not going to find at the grocery store or some of the big box places. They tend to be family owned wineries that we represent. We usually have at least one local Virginia wine available by the glass,” said Wigode.

Additionally, the wine bar offers whiskeys and scotches by the glass, as well as their local craft beer selection.

“We skew more local [with beers]. We have 6 craft beers on tap right now…we have 2 Virginia breweries [featured] – a Delaware brewery, a Pennsylvania one also,” stated Wigode. 

To go with the local drinks, Bottle Stop Wine Bar and Shop offers small tapas style fare that you can share with friends.

“Food wise we do cheese and charcuterie platters. So you can choose – we have a selection of about a dozen different artisan cheeses from around the world, and salamis and prosciuttos that you can mix and match. And then we do a few different versions of sliders – we do our specialty, which is a crab cake slider. And we do a beer braised beef slider – it’s short ribs braised in a local chocolate stout overnight. We do some smaller flatbread pizzas,” Wigode said.

Among their menu items, the most popular are the crab cake sliders and the Parmesan Asiago flatbread pizza.

According to Wigode, the community reaction to the wine bar has been overwhelmingly positive.

“We think people have enjoyed the concept. We get a lot of comments about how this was a needed element in the area. We’ve had a great first year and a half,” Wigode said.