Bacchus Smiled

As young marrieds, they’d been too poor to go out to eat. So Cathy watched Julia Child religiously, and on Saturday nights, she would whip up something special for them to eat. It was Jack’s job to go out and find an appropriate wine, but in the 1960s, this was difficult.

“No one was into wine back then,” he says. “I’d go to the liquor store and have five or six choices.” He finally found a store that specialized in wine, and the two began experimenting. By the time Jack took over at Haskell’s, he knew more about wine than any of their friends did.

The partners bought Haskell’s—then in the Dayton-Radisson Arcade on Seventh Street—in October 1970. It meant stepping into a firestorm.

“From Thanksgiving to the first of the year, you do 40 percent of your annual business,” Farrell says. “I was here six days a week and at least 12 to 14 hours a day. After that first holiday season, I built myself an office so I could get things done—and sleep there if I had to.”

Everything was about hard liquor back then. Restaurants hardly served wine. At Harry’s or Murray’s, a woman could order a glass of weak, pink Portuguese rosé. But men drank Canadian Club, Manhattans, and beer.

Yet Farrell, like Fritzi Haskell, loved wine. He was a businessman first; when liquor was outselling everything else, that’s what he stocked and specialized in. But quietly—in what was a largely personal crusade—Farrell grew the wine side of the business, and instituted a number of programs to educate and encourage the average consumer to drink more wine.

First, there was Bacchus—the Minnesota Wine and Food Society—which he launched in 1972. For a nominal fee, Bacchus members (50,000 nationwide) can attend tastings and gourmet dinners; buy discounted tickets for winery tours around the world; get a newsletter about wine pairings and Haskell’s wine specials; and receive a 10 percent discount on wine.

In 1973, Haskell’s became the second retailer in the nation to sell wine futures, offering customers the opportunity to purchase wine at a small markup from wholesale in the year it is produced and take delivery three years later, after the wine has been barrel-aged, bottled, and properly stored. But like a good broker, Farrell protects his customers. In 2006, he refused to offer Bordeaux futures because he thought they were ridiculously overpriced.