Robert Wilson didn’t have a home wine cellar and, in fact, didn’t drink much wine or anything else. But for years, he ran a very successful wine store in Denver — one of the first here that sold only wine.
Wilson, who owned the Vineyard Wine Store at 261 Fillmore St., died at his Denver home Sept. 17. He was 93.
“People told him he was crazy not to sell liquor too,” said Clif Louis, who bought the store from Wilson in the mid-1980s.
The store had one of the first wine-of-the-month clubs here, and over the years, the club had about 60,000 members. The store was one of the first that offered tours of wine-producing areas in California, Europe and Australia.
Wilson took people on 15 overseas trips and added history of the places as well as wine tasting.
He held about 5,000 seminars on wine.
“He was a merchandizing guy,” Louis said. “But after he made a wine trip to California, he fell in love” with the wine-store idea.
After Louis bought the Vineyard, he told Wilson to work as long as he wanted and whatever hours. Wilson continued to go to the store for the next 20 years. He was chairman of the board until 2005.
Wilson was a “gentle man,” but he sometimes got disgusted with either the “wine slobs” who just drank too much or the “wine snobs” who thought they needed a $70 bottle of wine with a hamburger, said Wilson’s daughter, Lynn Arnot of Denver.
The Vineyard began selling to restaurants, “and if people liked it, they were told where they could buy it,” said Wilson’s son, Robert B. “Buck” Wilson Jr.
He said he wasn’t sure whether his dad had a favorite wine, and he often told people, “If it tastes good, buy it.”
Robert Bruce Wilson Sr. was born in Denver on Nov. 17, 1917.
He attended middle school here and graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and Princeton University.
He served with the Army Air Corps and was in combat service in France and Germany.
He married Valentine Denham on June 21, 1939.
He worked for Daniels & Fisher, a longtime Denver department store, and became general-merchandise manager. He was interim chief executive just before the store was bought by the May Co.
He opened the Robert Wilson and Co. Mens Wear store downtown and later was vice president of the San Francisco-based Hastings chain of 15 department stores.
In addition to his wife, son and daughter, he is survived by seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
