Wine Station, a wine vending system that automatically omits wine oxidation with nitrogen gas to preserve quality (photo by PINGGOT ZULUETA)

"In vino veritas” (In wine, there is truth) or so they say when one starts slurring his words after having one glass too many. But for the Joseph brothers of Ralph’s Wines & Spirits, there is more to wine than being mere external stimulants of jovial, inebriated confessions. Thus, they created the Wine Museum, a four-storey building that encapsulates everything one needs to know about the vino.

For 35 years, Bobby, Ralph, Ronnie, and Raymond Joseph have been distributing wines around the country through wholesale and retail outlets. But as more and more Filipinos learn to appreciate the hedonic appeal of wines, the brothers decided to put up a Wine Museum that will further educate wine enthusiasts and novices alike on the art of wine making, tasting and pairing.

Devoted to wine and all the activities that come with it, the Wine Museum has a colonial restaurant with a ‘wine station’ at the ground floor, a wine education center on the second and nine fully-furnished hotel rooms on the third and fourth.

Wine Station

The colonial restaurant serves authentic Spanish dishes like Crispy Toro (beef shanks boiled in spices then deep fried until crisp); Pollo Mexicano (filleted chicken with green & red peppers and onions); Piscado Salsa Verde (fish, clams, and shrimps served with a cream sauce with parsley and asparagus); and the all-time favorite Paella Colonial (traditional Spanish rice dish with vegetables, chorizo, chicken, and shell fish).

 
But no matter how great their dishes are, the main attraction of their restaurant, according to Ralph Joseph, is the Wine Station, a wine vending system that automatically omits wine oxidation with nitrogen gas to preserve their quality.

“The cool thing about these wine dispensers is that you can open a bottle of wine and still make it last for 60 days without fermentation. Also, with this technology we offer wine-by-the-glass in three portions: tasting portion of 25 ml., half-glass portion of 75 ml., and full-glass portion of 150 ml.,” says Joseph.

The price of each tasting portion is directly proportionate to the retail price of the portion itself. So a 150-ml. serving of a standard 750-ml. wine bottle is priced at the retail of the wine, divided by five.

Wine Museum and Hotel

The actual wine museum is located at the second floor, where people can find old wine-making equipment such as an antique wine pressing machine, oak barrels and wine cellar photos. The space is also used as a wine education center where the Josephs conduct wine seminars, complete with video presentations, wine-tasting sessions and wine pairing tutorials.

“We do seminars to upgrade students who are studying the restaurant and tourism industry. For example, we conduct a course for P1,5000, where students get to taste four different wines and we pair them immediately with seven courses of food,” Joseph explains.

And for clients who had too much “fun” at the Wine Station and are just too drunk to drive, they can conveniently crash in for the night at Ralph’s nine hotel rooms on the third and fourth floors.

“For a place that holds seminars in the morning and parties at night, it’s a good idea to have hotel rooms for our guests just in case,” Joseph laughingly says. Prices of the rooms range from P2,000 for the deluxe suite to P3,500 for their luxury suite.

Despite the words “wine and spirits” on its name, Ralph’s is not exclusively for wine connoisseurs and oenophiles. Guests can come to the Wine Museum to have fun and experience something good and new.

“Everybody’s welcome here. We have wines from A-Z, from dry to sweet, from vintage to beginners’ wine because in truth wine tasting is always subjective. What you like is always the best for you and we hope that you find that wine here,” Joseph ends.