enoteca, term used frequently in Italy for a wine shop with a significant range of high-quality wines, while quite a few still offer the local wine or wines as vino sfuso, or in bulk, which are poured straight from the cask into demijohns brought along by customers. It contrasts with a bottiglieria, a shop with a more pedestrian selection, and a vineria, run by a vinaio, more of a tavern, in which wine is sold by the glass as well as by the bottle. Various enoteche, in Italy offer tasting facilities and some serve food to accompany the wines—from the mere appetite-stimulating to the most ambitious haute cuisine. The word comes from the same root as oenotria, the Ancient Greeks’ name for Italy, and theke, Greek for a case or receptacle.
