Ooltewah is right next door to Collegedale, which only began to let restaurants sell beer by the drink in 2009 and is home to Southern Adventist University, where alcohol is forbidden on campus. The greater Ooltewah area has at least 10 Adventist churches, a denomination whose members generally abstain.
But more tippling will take place amid the teetotalers, since two new alcohol-themed businesses are back-to-back in a building at Cambridge Square. It’s an upscale shopping center and soon-to-be residential development in Ooltewah (just inside Chattanooga city limits) at the corner of Ooltewah-Georgetown Road and Lee Highway, about half a mile from Interstate 75.
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Check Wine Bar Ooltewah’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/winedownbar to see when it gets its liquor license and opens. Hours will be from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday-Saturday, and 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.
Staff photo by John Rawlston/Chattanooga Times Free Press
Owner Marcus Garner, right, talks with manager Patrick Kenney at Wine Down, a soon-to-open wine tasting room that will also serve food, beer and liquor, on Tuesday, June 30, 2015, at Cambridge Square in the Ooltewah community in Chattanooga, Tenn. The recently-opened Heaven and Ale is located next door.Heaven & Ale, a tap room with 30 craft beers for sale, opened recently, and Wine Down Ooltewah, a wine tasting room that also will serve beer, spirits and lunch and dinner, plans to open soon, once it gets its state liquor license.
“We want guests to come and relax and – no pun intended – wind down. This is their place after work,” said Marcus Garner, who co-owns the wine bar with his wife, Georgia Garner. It’s meant to give Ooltewah-area residents a place for some “adult time,” he said, without having to “drive into Hamilton Place or Chattanooga.”