Chrysalis Inn's Fino: Research part of fun of having a wine bar

How do you choose the wines for a wine bar such as Chrysalis Inn's Fino, with 3,000 bottles to serve from?

It's easier if you've previously run a restaurant with a 25,000-bottle cellar.

That upper number fueled the wine list at Chuckanut Drive's popular Oyster Bar restaurant, an earlier endeavor for restaurateur Mick August, who with wife Cheryl August owned the Oyster Bar for about a decade in the 1980s, as well as the neighboring Oyster Creek Inn (now closed) and several other restaurants around Skagit County.

The couple still lives just across the road from the Oyster Bar, which roosts like an eagle on the side of Chuckanut Mountain above Samish Bay.

When the Chrysalis was on the drawing boards in the late 1990s, Mick August signed on as a consultant to figure out what kind of restaurant it should have.

"I like best sometimes the design and conceptualization in this business," said August, now 60, who ended up owning the restaurant he conceived. His daughter, Amy Costanti, manages it.

What inspired a European wine bar in Whatcom County, at a time when Northwest wines are the rage?

"We had traveled a lot in the 1990s to various wine regions of Europe and fell in love with the romance and the experience," August said.

Fino's wine list, with classic wines from France, Italy, Germany and Spain, complements dishes such as coq au vin and beef bourguignon, he said, "food that is maybe traditional and old-fashioned there but not so much experienced here."

And the happy part is that research is never finished. Italy is calling next.

"We travel as often as possible to research wine and new districts," August said. "We're going in October to Umbria, Bologna and around Parma."

— Brian J. Cantwell