WORCESTER — A couple who grew tired of driving to Shrewsbury to buy wine suitable to their palette have brought a unique selection of wines – not available in box stores – to the Worcester Public Market.

“There’s nowhere in our neighborhood to buy wine of any sort of value; the only store where you can theoretically get wine is Kelly Square Liquors, and they don’t really have a big selection that worked for us,” said Livy Scanlon.

Livy came up with the idea for Canal District Wines as she scratched her so-called “entrepreneurial itch” during a reassessment of her life brought on by the pandemic. After weighing the risks with her wife, Rachel, the two decided to open the store.

Canal District Wines, located in the Worcester Public Market, held its grand opening ceremony on Nov. 19. Livy said about 200 people were in attendance for the grand opening ceremony, which included a wine tasting and music.

The store offers 24 different wine selections with roughly the same number of red, white and rosé wines; they have orange wine as well, which Livy said is essentially the white wine version of rosé.

The wines are sourced to the store by their distributor, Gilbert Distributors, which is a woman owned business based in Shrewsbury that doesn’t sell to large retailers.

“Our distributor doesn’t sell to any big box retailers, so all of our wines are not available at big box stores,” said Livy.

The wines sourced by Gilbert come from winemakers with sustainable farming practices, most of which are owned by women and minorities.

“It was important to us to have as many women team members as possible. The wine industry, unsurprisingly, like many industries, is still pretty male dominant so we wanted to have a team of what we call our ‘wine babes’ with us for this journey,” said Livy.

In addition, Canal District Wines offers wine pairings with other products offered at Worcester Public Market, such as “Sub Zero Ice Cream’s Cherry Charge with Los Morros Pinot Noir” and “Pacha Mama’s Lomo Saltado with Petite Etoiles Malbec.” For the entire list of pairings please go here: https://www.canaldistrictwines.com/market-map.