Niko's Wine Corner located on the historic Lawrenceville downtown square offers wine by the glass in house and for purchase to go. Owner Niko Patel said they will soon carry more than 1000 labels.

LAWRENCEVILLE — For those who appreciate and enjoy tasting and buying bottles of fine wine, Gwinnett County’s historic downtown Lawrenceville square just got a fantastic new addition — Niko’s Wine Corner, located at 178 E. Crogan St., Suite 210.

For Niko Patel, a 12-year veteran of the industry who also owns a package store in Snellville on Scenic Highway, the opening of his new specialty wine shop along with partner Leslie Maske is a dream come true. 

What makes the new store unique to Gwinnett County and different from his other store, Patel said, is the ability to offer patrons a “try before you buy” experience, meaning besides selling bottles to go, wine by the glass is also available to those who visit.   

“I’ve always wanted to do this kind of set up where you can sit down and can drink and try different wines because there are so many good wines out there,” Patel said. “Not everyone knows all these labels so people can expand their palette and knowledge of different wines. It also helps me to understand my customer’s taste when they try it so the next time I can recommend something else.”

To commemorate the store’s opening Friday, hundreds showed up Saturday afternoon for a wine tasting and to nibble on fruits and cheeses in order to sample some of Niko’s 500 selections currently available. Patel said like his store in Snellville, he’ll soon have more than 1000 labels on hand in Lawrenceville. In the coming months after a city ordinance change, he’s also expecting to sell craft and high gravity beers. But he said the selections you’ll find at his shops are different from that of typical package stores or supermarkets, which he said oftentimes, carry many of the same, well known labels that you’ll find in many stores.  

“Most of the typical package stores you find won’t have the selections I have,” Patel said. “The beauty of wine is that you don’t have to buy a good bottle of wine and pay too much money for it. There are a lot of quality wines that are inexpensive,” Patel said. “Most package stores also focus on liquor, on alcohol. My focus is on wines, and on unique wines and quality wines. I try to find labels that got better quality than what you pay for. My labels are not well known and I like to offer many choices.”

Patel said finding the right location for the store was integral in why he chose locating at the historic downtown square. He specifically mentioned the neighborhood’s vitality, the tourists that visit and the niche small businesses popping up all around it. To hear Patel in his own words on why he always wanted to open a specialty wine store, what he referred to as “his library,” click here.

From left, Shane Hill, Jason Lancaster and Joyce Harvey prepare to sample one of Con Vinum's samples as wine consultant Bill Reynolds looks on and waits for their reaction. Con Vinum currently has four labels for sale at Niko's Wine Corner and their Cotes Du Rhone was a big hit at Saturday's wine tasting.

Wine Consultant Bill Reynolds of Con Vinum Wines was one of a few people on hand Saturday pouring glasses for sample. One in particular that many seemed to enjoy was “Ferraton’s Cotes Du Rhone,” a 2007 French red blend that seemed to have everyone talking as they sampled.  

“People really have shown a fondness for that one,” Reynolds said.

“I think it tastes very good,” said one taster. “It would be very good with pork.”

“And barbeque,” Reynolds added. “McCray’s Tavern carries it and it’s great with a hamburger off the grill, too.”

The wine was rated 89 out of 100 by Robert Parker.

“The Cotes Du Rhone is excellent,” said Al Brochu, who came out in support of Patel after having been a customer at his other store. “It’s smooth, light and refreshing. It’s a great wine.”

 The wine consultant Reynolds agreed with Patel about the advantage to wine shopping at a specialty shop as opposed to a package liquor store or supermarket.

“This store offers a lot greater variety of hard-to-find-wines, smaller producers and wines that you may not find anywhere else,” Reynolds said. “I think it’s fabulous and that they are off to a great start.”

Reynolds also had a great answer that could sum up the experience of shopping at a wine specialty store like Niko’s. When asked how he became a wine consultant, Reynolds said, “First you learn to fall in love with wine and all the things that it adds to life, in terms of knowledge about the world, in terms of friendliness with food and in terms of making new friends,” he said. “Wine adds a lot to life.”

Stop in at Niko's Wine Corner for a glass of vino or a bottle to go.

Niko’s Wine Corner is currently open 11 a.m. until 9 p.m. Monday thru Saturday. For more information, on the Web visit www.nikoswinecorner.com or phone 770-962-0348.

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From left, Defy Thirst founders Matt Turner and Stephen Dupuis stand over a water filtration system implemented at the Manta Orphanage in Ecuador. The two leave to work in Haiti on another water project Friday.

LAWRENCEVILLE — They’re young, ambitious, educated, hard working and well-travelled, and the goal they have for the nonprofit organization they’ve formed — Defy Thirst— is simple. Twenty-four-year-olds’ Matt Turner and Stephen Dupuis want to empower the poverty stricken people of the world to stand up and do what their organization’s name states, defy thirst.  Turner and Dupuis hope to accomplish this by making clean, safe water available to all through providing cheap, efficient water filtration technology to those who want it.

Starting Friday and over the next couple of weeks, the two and their team of volunteers will put this strategy to the test in the village of Petit Goave, a town southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the city ravaged by a deadly earthquake in January that left tens if not hundreds of thousands of people dead. They’re also planning trips this year to work on projects in Kenya, Tanzania, India and Ghana, where Dupuis once lived doing HIV education work. Cambodia is even a possibility.

For both Turner and Dupuis, the idea to give people access to water came to them while attending a Christian church sports camp a few years ago in Missouri. Simply put, the two became friends and both wanted to do something positive for the world. And as the two travelled together in the undeveloped world, they also saw how rural communities often struggled to meet basic human needs, like having access to clean water.

For Turner, who studies water microbiology as a graduate student in the Rollins School of Public Health at Atlanta’s Emory University, he’s dedicated his life to this type of work. He even got his start working on small water filtration systems at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When he last visited Haiti, he got sick, most likely from the water, by eating a “gourmet” Haitian meal of spaghetti noodles and ketchup.

An unidentified orphan from the Manta Orphanage in Ecuador watches clean water come through a Defy Thirst water filtration system as the group's cofounder Stephen Dupuis looks on. Defy Thirst likes to employ different technologies that are site specific depending on a village or city's water needs on the ground.

“I was sickened by what I saw,” Turner said. “Water microbiology is the basis for all water-borne diseases in the world… The statistic is that less than one percent of all water projects in the world are still in existence and working one year after their install date. So you’ve got all these nonprofits, churches, community groups that raise all this money for these water projects, but because there is no long term investment in the community, it just disappears and doesn’t have the impact that people are running around saying that it had.”

And that’s what these two want to change. They don’t just want to provide clean water in a sustainable fashion; they also want to build life-lasting relationships with the people in the villages they serve.

“One of the important things in the effectiveness of a project is how involved are the people in the community and how much do they want it,” Turner said. “You can’t just come into a community and say, ‘Hey, you need clean water.’ If they (villagers) don’t see it as important, they won’t take care of whatever you put in there or they won’t use it or they’ll take it apart and sell the parts for a little bit of money.”

“There are so many different problems you have to look at,” Dupuis said. “We don’t want to just drop a system off and leave.”

“Over a long period of time what we want to do is take these communities we work in and be a partner with them in turning their situation around but allowing them to turn their situations around by working with us,” Turner said. “It’s all about helping people. For us it’s about accomplishing something in our lifetime.”   

Both Turner and Dupuis and their Defy Thirst nonprofit have already completed a successful water project in Ecuador at an orphanage and also at a 4-H camp here in Georgia in Dahlonega. They’ve joined the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce, are actively fundraising and applying for grants, and even hope to form a for-profit company that can provide jobs and eventually cover the nonprofit’s administrative costs. And with the word spreading about the mission they are embarking upon, they don’t even have to seek out projects. Rather, the projects are finding them.

“People just come to us,” Turner said. “We’ve got friends in Haiti and they came to us and said this community has asked for help. In Ghana, it was a church that came to us and asked us for help with clean water. In April, we’ll go there to work in a village with about 3,000 people to bring them clean water.”

“Each system is going to be different,” Dupuis adds. “You can’t just say one technology will work.”

“We’re very research oriented,” Turner said. “We try to be grounded to the science to be effective by doing lots of monitoring and evaluation so that we’re effective and not throwing people’s money away.”

And for anyone looking to donate money to a good cause in the undeveloped world that will help the unfortunate, not throwing people’s money away is exactly the words you’d want to hear.

To hear more about the water filtration systems used and the project process Defy Thirst employs, click here.

To learn more about the organization and to donate money to this 501(c)(3), visit www.defythirst.org

An upclose look at part of a water filtration system developed by the nonprofit Defy Thirst.

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From left, Giiiko of Tha Slab Bois and Latasha Turner check out the T-shirt they made for an upcoming concert as Big Frog owners Danita Baham and her husband Claude look on.

SNELLVILLE — Perfect, cool, neat. Those three words uttered by customers in describing their in-store experience would be music to any small business owners’ ears.

They were also exactly the words Tha Slab Boiz used to describe their experience making T-shirts Tuesday at Big Frog, Custom T-Shirts & More, located at 1905 Scenic Highway in the Presidential Markets Shopping Center (near the Carmike Cinemas and Panera Bread).

Why were the Lithonia-based and hip-hop-rapping Tha Slab Boiz visiting Big Frog? They had a concert the next day in Birmingham and wanted to wear T-shirts advertising themselves while performing. Along with their graphic designer Latasha Turner in tow (she designed and photographed the logo), for $47.67 all three patrons left Big Frog with a different sized T-shirt of their own with Tha Slab Boiz logo and art emblazed on the front. If things go well in Alabama, the group could be back to buy more T-shirts to sell to their growing number of fans. Or maybe they’ll sell posters or drink coasters. Or coozies. In this 21^st century technological age, you’d be amazed the number of items memories or art could now be printed upon.  

That’s only part of the beauty of the Big Frog, Custom T-shirts & More store – they make what you want when you want. Need 50 T-shirts, no problem.  If you only need one shirt at first, then maybe 50 later, also no problem. Only need one? That’s cool, too. Whatever the order, Big Frog will turn it around in 24 hours or less while doing everything in-house. They can even help design the art you want using one of their two graphic designers and computer stations. Or you might bring your own art or photos into the store on a thumb drive. It’s really up to the customer, and the cost for either service is the same. Just be prepared to have fun putting something onto something else that means something to you. It truly is memory preservation at its finest and you can put that memory onto just about anything. Puzzles, blankets , towels and pillowcases were just a few items mentioned in addition to T-shirts.

“Your imagination is your only limitation,” said co-owner Danita Baham in describing the Big Frog experience. “You can have a T-shirt that means something to you in 20 minutes.” To listen to Baham describe the technology used to accomplish this so quickly, click here.

Long gone are the days of the iron-on print T-shirt from the county fair that surely would crack, peel and wrinkle the first time it went through a wash cycle.

“It’s neat seeing what they can do and how quickly the end product turns out,” said Anna Swindle, who handles some public relations for Big Frog. “It’s clean, it’s flat, the T-shirt doesn’t crack or peel. It really is different.”

Co-owner Claude Baham, Danita’s husband, said another differentiating factor that makes Big Frog stand out from its competition is its low pricing.

Claude Baham prepares a T-shirt for printing at Big Frog. The printer and technology used keeps the T-shirts from fading, cracking and peeling when washed.

“The easiest people to sell to are the people who’ve bought shirts before because they’re used to paying set-up fees, used to paying artwork fees and used to paying minimums,” Claude said. “When you tell them we don’t have these things, it’s easy. We are the only place where you can come in and do that.”

Big Frog can do what it does for any individual and just about any group, too. Shiloh High School’s Robotics Club had its finals T-shirts waiting for pick-up when this reporter visited. Work had also been done for various local sports teams and cheerleading squads. Big Frog has also printed things for theatre groups, churches, small businesses and family reunions.

You can have an idea of your own, but you don’t really need one at this direct to garment printer.

Claude, a former Chief Information Officer for Allied Automotive, also said the printing technology used is green, meaning no harsh chemicals are used in the printing process. The technology has the capability to produce 16 million different colors.

“Everything is garment dye which electronically bonds to the shirts,” he said. “It’s very similar to almost like an inkjet printer. We’re printing on top of the shirt and then we heat press it, and that embeds the garment dye into the shirt so it becomes part of the shirt. That’s why we’re able to hot water wash, color safe bleach it, iron it, whatever.”

 Claude said the biggest satisfaction he gets from his customers nowadays is hearing what they want to preserve or promote when they come into the store.

“Everyone that comes in has a unique story and it’s special to them,” Claude said. “Even if it’s their business, they are proud of their logo or their art work and they bring it to us. That’s the coolest thing.”

To hear Claude tell one of his favorite stories of a T-shirt Big Frog designed (it’s about a hot dog), click here. 

The Baham’s only opened Big Frog in Snellville six months ago (the franchise is from Clearwater, FL). They’re already thinking of adding another metro area location (there are two additional stores located in Buckhead and Cumming). But first they want to overcome what they said is so far their biggest challenge.

“The hardest part is getting the word out that we’re here,” Claude said.

Big Frog representatives will be at the Run the Reagan race this weekend shooting out complimentary T-shirts from a T-shirt cannon. If you’re still in need of a Valentine gift for your sweetheart, show off your creative side by visiting Big Frog between now and Saturday. The store is open Monday to Friday from 9 to 6 and Saturday from 9 – 1. T-shirts start as low as $14.99.

Co-owner Claude Baham is a native of New Orleans and already had a Saints SuperBowl T-shirt on display. Patrons of Big Frog can make T-shirts look however they desire.

Big Frog of Snellville co-owners Claude and Danita Baham.

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