Drink Books  was a brick-and-mortar book and natural wine shop—in Seattle's Phinney Ridge neighborhood from October 2021 to August 2023. While the physical shop has closed due to impending demolition of the building, the idea of Drink Books as community for readers, natural wine lovers, and folks who are interested in building community around thoughtful, drinkable art lives on through pop-up shops, events, and book-and-wine subscriptions around the Seattle area, and possibly coming to a city near you soon! 

About Book Cru: 

Book Cru is a book-and-wine club that pairs novels with the bottle you'll want to drink with it, rooted in the belief that any act of consumption—be it fermented juice or a sensational sentence—is an experience worth talking about. Started in 2019, the club continues as a subscription service delivering a book, bottle, and pairing tasting notes to local Seattle subscribers each month. While we are currently not taking new subscribers until later this fall, check out Book Cru Friends to read along with us. 

Are you a natural wine shop or bar interested in starting Book Cru in your business? We'd love to help you set it up! Inquire here.

Why books and natural wine?  

Great books have the power to elicit an emotional response. They get to the core of who we are; they expand our awareness; they challenge us; they can make us feel seen. Books, and how we feel about them, can change over the course of our reading; they can defy our expectations and ability to say what it is and what it’s doing. Natural wine often works this way too. It changes from sip to sip. It speaks. It doesn’t include chemical alterations, or commercial yeasts that mask its true qualities. Wine making and writing are both processes of transformation—there are grapes and there are words and then, if we’re lucky, skilled, and possess a small amount of magic, there will be wine and there will be a story.

More About Us: 

Founder Kim Kent has had her head stuck in a book for most of her life. While not reading, she has worked in a number of Seattle restaurants including Delancey and the Walrus & The Carpenter, as well as stints working in literary and art book publishing. In 2019, many years into her reading journey and a few fewer into learning about natural wine, she founded Book Cru: a book and bottle club that pairs a novel with a bottle of wine, monthly. With the help of many friends the project expanded into a brick-and-mortar book and wine shop in Seattle's Phinney Ridge neighborhood, called Drink Books. In addition to continuing to curate Book Cru and pop-up events for Drink Books, Kent is working on her first novel.