An Interview with Meri Lugo of Domestique
Meri Lugo standing in her shop in front of a wide shelf of various wines. Photo taken on a Sony a600 with permission of Domestique
I met Meri at Domestique, a natural wine shop neatly sandwiched between the Bloomingdale and Eckington neighborhoods, on the corner of Florida and North Capitol Street. It’s a beautiful space. Wooden racks loaded with wine line the walls well light by the natural light that filters in through the big shop windows. Meri’s official title is Director of Operations, a catch-all title that can run the gamut of responsibility; anything from a pallet of wine getting shipped to the wrong location to a burst pipe in the building that needs to be fixed. She co-owns the business with friend and founder Jeff Segal and can often be found at the front counter helping customers pick out just the right wine or sitting at the big oak table in the back room working through any number of tasks on her never ending to do list. Meri has a mosaic perspective on DC, having started her career at a think tank working on nuclear nonproliferation before transitioning to the world of hospitality. Prior to stepping into her role at Domestique, Meri spent a decade in restaurants including working on the team at Komi and Little Serow, the much loved Dupont Circle favorites led by Michelin starred chef Johnny Monis.
Meri was nice enough to sit down with me for well over an hour, covering everything from her own pivot into hospitality, her early career in restaurants, and the future of Domestique. In our last few minutes we ran a lightning round of Meri’s favorite restaurants, hidden gems, and wine bars in the city. If you’re ever looking for recommendations it’s a great place to start!
This interview has been lightly edited for conciseness and clarity.
Taken with a Sony a6000 with the permission of the Domestique team.
Tell me a little bit about Domestique!
Domestique is a natural wine shop! We opened in November 2018, a few days before Thanksgiving. Even in the last six years the wine world has changed a ton in DC, in the world, and in the country. I think natural wine is very much more on people's minds and on restaurant lists and in shops, which is incredible. But back then it very much was a new and foreign thing for a lot of people. We are still DC's only wine shop that sells exclusively natural wine. A lot of shops and restaurants have a natural wine selection or are mostly natural wine, but everything that we sell is natural.
I feel like I’ve seen a lot of people online talking about natural wine, what does it mean for a wine to be natural?
It’s very much a you know it when you see it kind of definition. For us, natural wine is wine that's made from organic grapes. It doesn't necessarily have to be certified but it has to be functionally organic. There's lots of different types of certifications that agricultural workers and agricultural entities can bestow upon grapes and wine, so certifications feel less important to us. With organic grapes the fermentation has to be totally natural - you put the grapes together and you let them do their thing. There's no added yeasts, there's no added flavorings or things like that. Then there's a minimal amount of sulfur or preservatives added. So there's nothing else added beyond just the grapes, and that's it. Grapes & time and then no additives. It’s something that we’re really passionate about.
So how do you buy wine?
So because DC is not a state, the laws that govern alcohol importation are very different than other places in the US. Most states have a three tier system where you have the producer, importer, then the distributor, and the retailer (the wine shop) has to work through those systems. So if you’re a shop in another state you can’t just call up a winemaker and say “Hey, I love your wine, can I sell it in my shop?” In DC we can actually do that and import wine directly from producers. It is really really satisfying to be able to work with the actual producers and know that the purchase we are making and the wine we are purchasing is having a direct effect on a producer’s survival and success. That’s a really cool part of being in the wine business in DC. We still work with a lot of importers and distributors but having multiple avenues versus just being forced to work directly with one channel is really great.
Given that you can work through multiple channels, how do you figure out which new wines you want to buy for the shop?
So like we talked about we do have importers we work with that only source natural wine. Whenever they bring us something we know it is going to be natural. Then we also have a lot of personal relationships with producers around the world. Because of that direct importing ability we can literally reach out via instagram or email and just ask them a lot of questions to understand what they make, how they make it. One really great thing about our shop is that we get DMs from people all the time who are like “Hey, we’re just a husband and wife team making cider in Upstate New York, we’re coming through DC soon, would you want to taste with us?” Having that ability to just say yes is really cool, and we’re always on the lookout for what people are drinking online and overseas and at natural wine fairs.
One more question about wine before we talk about you, what is on trend right now? What are you seeing in the natural wine space?
Oh man, it’s interesting. You know it feels like we are in a perpetual orange wine moment, which is great. I am very much of the mind that more is more, and so the more people who can be interested and excited about wine but don’t necessarily know all the nuts and bolts is great. But, I do think there is sort of a return right now to more classic styles, like structured, tannic, red wine, white wine with some oak on it, just sort of these more traditional, more sort of classical styles of wine feel like they are cool again. There was this overcorrection and this move towards super low tannic, chillable orange wines and red wines and I think we’re seeing a little bit of a movement back.
In terms of cool regions, Jura is always cool, always and forever. It feels like people in the natural wine world are very taken with the Jura. There are a couple producers there that people really love and are always super excited about. I’m actually also really excited about domestic wine. I think especially with the talk of wine tariffs and tariffs in general which will obviously have a huge effect on wine we’re thinking a lot about domestic wine and supporting producers in domestic wine right now both locally and up and down the East Coast. The wine industry on the east coast is sort of at this interesting moment where they've had a couple of decades of wine making experience and knowledge and it feels like this very rapidly developing and rapidly improving world and community, which is really cool. There's a really cool Virginia wine community, which we love. And then in California, they're really hitting on hard times. With climate change and the wine industry bottoming out there's a ton of California producers who are really struggling and just not able to make ends meet. That feels like something we want to support actionably so we're thinking a lot about that these days.
“You’re moving boxes, you’re talking to people, you’re picking up bottles, you’re picking up plates, you’re opening bottles of wine, you’re pouring it for people. Those are all things that feel very real, very tangible, very physical. ”
Let’s talk about you a little bit! Jeff mentioned you went to Stanford and moved out to DC to do something completely different than where you are today. I would love to hear about that journey.
We can talk about Little Serow, too, because my start in restaurants was definitely a fraught path for a while. I went to Stanford and then I moved to DC in 2008/2009 after graduation to do the sort of foreign policy path. In school I specialized in nuclear nonproliferation. I moved here and wanted to do that kind of foreign policy stuff. I did that for about six months, a year or so, and completely hated it. I just thought it was very soul sucking, it was not all all what I wanted to do. At that time it was mostly Cold War Hawks who were all 60 years old; just rooms full of white men who had absolutely no time for a young female.
I'd always been into food, my dad was a very ardent cook. He was a very talented home cook so I'd always had that as something that I enjoyed. When I realized that I just hated the policy world I ended up quitting my job sort of unceremoniously and spent several months baking at home thinking that I wanted to be a pastry chef.
I went into the food and beverage and restaurant world wanting to be a pastry chef. I ended up applying for a hosting job at a now defunct restaurant called Palena which was a beloved restaurant in Cleveland Park run by a very talented chef named Frank Ruta, who used to be a former White House Chef. He was a very rustic Italian dude, just really, really special. I was a host there and then ended up coming in and prepping in the kitchen for free during the days before hosting at night.
I worked my way up and served for a while before finally getting in a paid position in the kitchen where I learned a lot in terms of focus, organization, cooking, approaches to cooking, savory cooking, all that stuff.
I think one thing that I'm sure you hear many times in your interviews is how the small business world and the wine and food and beverage world is full of so many overlapping connections; it’s such a people driven place. It's all driven on relationships. There's lots of like word of mouth and you end up working with somebody that you knew from way back when. It's a lot of people making connections and remembering you which has been really a rewarding thing in the last 15 years that I've been doing this.
I had somebody who I worked with initially at Palena who had left to to a open a restaurant and she ended up connecting me with the Host at Little Serow and Komi. I ended up going over to Komi and I worked front of the house. I was a server at Komi for several years and then moved over to Little Serow when Jill from Tail Up Goat left Little Serow to open Tail Up Goat. There are so many people who end up working together and then do their own projects, but still, you know, maintain those connections.
I spent probably ten years in the restaurant world working my way up in the fine dining world which was incredible. I really learned the importance of the relationship between purveyor or service provider and customer and how that can be a really, really powerful force. We had so many incredible regulars at Komi and Little Serow and it's the same people who want to support small businesses. You'll see their names and their faces pop up throughout the city. I came over the Domestique in 2020, so it was during the pandemic. It was sort of an inflection point for Domestique. Domestique had been open about a year, a year and a half at that point and like all businesses was forced to shut the doors and then really forced to grow a little bit faster than we were comfortable with. We had to figure out delivery, eCommerce, all of that stuff. I came in to impart a little bit of order. That introduction to Domestique was made by somebody I worked with a Little Serow, actually, Rebekah, who was one of the founding members of Domestique. She ended up being the one to kind of put all those pieces together.
But I realized I'm not sort of answering your question. I think I spent a lot of years grappling with the question of am I using my education. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a consultant. I'm not a financial person. I've obviously finally made peace with it but it did take me many, many years to be okay with the fact that I don't have a career that looks similar to what my classmates are doing.
But I find something just inescapably, I don't know, I just I find it very rewarding to work with my hands and feel like I'm putting in an honest day's work in a physical way. Funny enough, these days I do spend a lot of time on my computer but there is a physicality about owning a space, having a job that has a very physical element. You're moving boxes, you're talking to people, you're picking up bottles, you're picking up plates, you're opening bottles of wine, you're pouring it for people. Those are all things that feel very real, very tangible, very physical. And I found that this sort of physical visceral fatigue I felt at the end of the day just couldn't compete with an office job.
But there were also a lot of social pressure of people being like, “You got a Stanford degree and now you’re a server” you know? So that was something that took a really, really long time to be okay with, for my family to be okay with, and for my social group to be okay with. So, it definitely was not easy.
What was the DC restaurant culture like in those early days of working at restaurants?
I am really lucky in that I only have worked in pretty small restaurants. My husband is also in restaurants, we actually met at Komi. I essentially exclusively worked for chef-owned chef-operated places, which I think are the most special and the most interesting. The culture is very much, at least in the places that I worked, very much one where you take care of your own. You work really, really, really hard but people stay for a really long time. There are so many relationships that get forged that end up paying dividends, personally and professionally, for the rest of your career. You can always come back and rely on those relationships because you know that there are good people out there who are doing really cool, really honest things. It's a really hard industry. It's a very gritty industry. But it also is one that is totally based on passion and love and wanting to do it because you love it, not because you're trying to make a fast buck or anything.
I’m curious about the fetishization of the hospitality business. Whenever I go on my “for you” page on Instagram, I see these reels of someone who just quit their banking job and is opening their own bakery or small cafe and everything looks easy and incredibly aesthetically pleasing. Do you feel like there has been a bit of a fetishization of this type of career as a lifestyle?
I don’t necessarily know if it's good or bad. I mean when I started 15 years ago I quit my job and I was literally a host making, you know, $12 an hour or whatever. Like there was no there was no sexiness about that. At the time there weren't TikTokers, there weren't Instagram accounts sort of fetishizing food in the same way. People were into food, but not the way they are right now. Which, I mean, I think all boats rise in a lifting tide. There is enough sunshine for everybody. It's great that there is more emphasis and more excitement around these things but it definitely feels like it tiptoes around that fetishization. People will come up to me or to my coworkers and they're like, oh, you just drink wine all day, right? And what it’s actually like is that I need to worry about margins. I was talking to a colleague of mine recently about how it's so important for us to continue to return to wine and remind ourselves why we do this, because if you're not continuing to remind yourself that human beings make this, that this is something that we love that's beautiful, that's soulful, that is an expression of a time and a place and a person that you just think about it as a commodity. But it is the thing that pays the bills. And so how do you strike that balance between something that pays the bills, that has margins, that is a business but also you do this because you love it. You know, no one's getting rich from a tiny wine store so it's a balancing act for sure.
Photo taken with a Sony a600 with permission of Domestique.
Let’s turn to the business a bit. Obviously the pandemic shifted things, how big is eCommerce for Domestique?
So the eCommerce business has definitely become a great tool for us. We ship nationally and also deliver (in DC). I think we will always think of ourselves as a neighborhood place, a neighborhood brick and mortar spot that people can come to. The pandemic has really forced us to look beyond the actual neighborhood. Being able to deliver throughout DC and also being able to ship nationally through our website has been a really cool way to reach customers beyond like the Bloomingdale/Shaw/LeDroit Park area. We appreciate that it's tough sometimes to navigate to this corner and so if there are ways that we can reach our neighbors, our DC folks beyond that we try to take every opportunity to do that.
“How do you strike that balance between something that pays the bills, that has margins, that is a business but also you do this because you love it.”
As a co-owner/operator, you have a lot of responsibility. How do you personally allocate your time between people management, managing finances, identifying new wines, essentially all of the things you have to do every day?
I feel like this is the perennial struggle I have, probably all operators have. I think the struggle is about what I love, which is to be on the floor, spend time with my staff, spend time with the customers, be tasting the wine, talking about the wine, you know, learning about the wine. But these days I spend most of my time doing admin in terms of purchasing wine. That takes a lot of time in terms of analyzing what we need, what's the most cost effective method to get it to us, actually procuring the wine, all of that takes a lot. The logistical portions of bringing wine into the US, the tax and the duties, all that kind of stuff. So the operations part, I would say is about 50% or more and then there's also content generation, so figuring out how our website looks, how are we curating that, how are the photos looking, how's Instagram, that marketing content area.
Then the education component of tasting wine and talking to people is 25%. During the pretty crazy times it ends up being less, it ends up being usually like 15% or 10%. I feel like I can always just feel that even in a balance way, like a human way where if I am just in front of my computer I feel like I haven't really accomplished anything. Sometimes I remind myself to just stop and go to the floor and remember why I'm doing all of this and sort of connect the dots that way. It definitely feels like it's a daily struggle to force myself to make time to be on the floor and make those connections with the staff and also with the customers.
You have made the transition from someone who started their career here to someone who has been here for well over a decade and is now rooted in the District. How has DC shaped your experience?
It feels like it definitely has. I mean I moved to DC not thinking I was going to stay here, you know. I thought I would stay here for a couple of years and the goal was eventually to move back to California. I don't know exactly when it happened but there was some inflection point where I realized that DC is my home. I bought a house here and I have a child here, my husband lives here, we have jobs here. I now run a business here. This is where I live, this is my home. It very much is something that happened gradually but is something I'm happy about. It's something I'm very grateful for. I have a lot of affection for DC and I do feel protective (of DC). Like you were saying earlier about DC really kind of getting a short shift of people not thinking about it as a real city, as a true city. I think when you live here for as long as I have, and I know there are many people who have lived here many years longer than I have, but the city is populated with memories and places that I’ve lived. I know someone who lives on the next street over and it’s just sort of the way any hometown grows in your individual and collective memory. It just feels like DC has been a part of a quarter of my life or a third of my life at this point, you know?
It's not to say that sometimes I'm not frustrated at DC or all of that, and I think we're sort of looking down the barrel of a couple years that feel pretty scary just in so many different way. But even just culturally, what is the fabric of DC going to look like with different people coming in, the vibes being super different. I remember in 2016 just feeling like we were all bracing for impact, or that things were just going to be really, really bad. Then they obviously were really bad but it also felt like the people in DC were still the people in DC. We still live here, we still exist, we still have the same value as that we had before. All of those things still exist. So I have enough to remind myself that we're going to get through this.
In the last couple of weeks we've had a lot of customers come in and have to cancel wine club or can't buy wine because they're federal workers. It does feel like we're all so interdependent and the customers and the neighbors and the people that we depend on for their business are the middle class workers who are being affected right now. So it very much feels like it's a scary time for a small business.
Meri’s “Best of” List
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Pen Druid is a brewery run by three brothers in Sperryville. They make beer that is all natural, wood fermented. It’s very much Belgian style with some spontaneity. In the past we have overseen their wine program but they also recently started making wine so it’s fun to go out there and get a beer or a glass of wine. Good fun fact for you, they have a food truck named Sumac that was written up in the New York Times. It’s a really good day trip if you live in DC.
Green Almond Pantry is a prepared food market in Georgetown. Çağla, the chef and founder is Turkish and was the opening chef at Etto on 14th street. She makes incredibly fresh food that is super tasty. She’s in the process of opening a restaurant next to Green Almond Pantry called My Little Chamomile with her friends Katie and An. I know the person who is doing the wine and its going to have an incredible wine list with is super exciting.
Located in Parkview off of Georgia Ave, No Kisses is the wine portion of Sonny’s Pizza. They have a kind like disco, romantic vibe with a really cool wine list. It’s great for late night vibes.
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We had a spate during the pandemic when we would order Meats & Foods for the staff like once a week. Literally our accountant was like, “So do you have a subscription to Meats & Foods, because you guys spend a lot there.” But the food is just so satisfying, it's really delicious. It is a partner team who do everything themselves which is just really cool.
I would pick Two Amy’s but I already said them so Bar Del Monte, Two Amy’s sister restaurant. They have great pizza and it’s nice not to have to schlepp all the way to Tenleytown.
Obelisk had one of the first tasting menus in DC, I think of them as like the Chez Panisse of DC. It is straight out of the 80’s or early 90’s in the best possible way. It’s honest, soulful, just the most incredible food. I introduced it to one of the members of our team and he actually ended up having his wedding reception there, so it definitely looms large in Domestique top restaurants for sure.
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Museums:
As a resident I never get to the museums nearly as much as I actually should. I’ve been getting to them a little bit more because with a new kid you’re always trying to find ways to use time. I haven’t been to the National Portrait Gallery in like five years and it is just so incredible. So for my first hidden gem it is just a reminder that exists and we should definitely, collectively as residents, take advantage of that more than we do.
City Pools:
I would say taking advantage of city pools during the summer is another one. We have incredible pools in most neighborhoods. Even from here I can think of three pools within walking distance and they’re great to have that as a resource. It’s also cool because each pool is unique and you can get the vibe of a neighborhood from that neighborhood’s particular pool.
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Rosé Pet Nat 2023 - Alexandre Giquel
A classic natural wine is a petnat, so naturally sparkling in style which feels to me like a poster child for natural wine. Essentially, it’s made by bottling the wine right before the fermentation process is finished, so it has all of the bubbles, the effervescence that has naturally occurred. It is one of those wines that is so delicious, so easy drinking, but also is very clearly well made and very thoughtfully made. We only get it every once in a while so it’s a perennial favorite. This year we got it over the holidays and I took a bottle home and remember opening it and being like, oh my god, it feels like coming home. It’s just the perfect example of that style of wine, easy drinking but very technically sound.
Charles Dufour is a producer who comes from a legacy winemaking family in Aube, France. Every year he releases a blended champagne called Comptoir # and then whatever number for that year. We just got our shipment in recently, Comptoir #12, which, much to our importer’s chagrin came right after New Years. It’s always a highlight on our shelves and the label every year is also super fun.
Note - Domestique has since sold out online of this year’s shipment.
So this wine is right around $20 and was one of the first wines that I loved before I got into wine. It’s called Skull Red and is a very full, robust red blend from California. Whenever we have it on shelves people really love it. They have a cool label and reminds me of my roots and where I started learning to love wine.
Note - we linked the sparkling white but stop in the shop to see if they have the red available!