EASTHAMPTON — A few years back, longtime friends Miranda Brown and Lauren Clark realized that the city didn’t have its own quality wine store.

“It was during the pandemic, and everybody was going and buying wine. … We were just like, ‘Why do we have to go to another town to get a decent bottle?’ ” Clark said, adding that at the time River Valley Co-Op didn’t even have a store in Easthampton, so there were only package stores to buy wine.

To solve that problem, the two decided to get down to work and open up their own store.

Tip Top Wine Shop, located in the back of the Paragon Arts and Industry Building at 150 Pleasant St., opened on Nov. 1.

“It’s been a really good reception,” Brown said. “It seems like Easthampton was ready for a wine shop.”

The store sources select wines from boutique distributors in Massachusetts who work with small producers all around the world.

“(The distributors) go and travel and seek out family or smaller wine producers who are really hands-on, really care about the product they’re making,” said Clark. “In some cases, they’re working with native grapes that might be lesser-known, or they’re in a region that’s adjacent to a more-known region.”

“So in a lot of cases, they present a really good value — really good wine for the money,” she said.

That good value and quality wine is all part of Tip Top’s philosophy: making wine accessible and affordable, but still delicious.

“It’s very much face-to-face, personal relationships, tasting all the time, learning all the time and, of course, working with producers who are usually using sustainable farming practices, if they’re not outright organic or natural wine certified,” Clark said.

Right now, said Clark, the wine world is in a “new era” where a greater variety of wines are becoming available from smaller producers, oftentimes younger generation winemakers who are making and exporting higher-quality wines than their forebears.

“It’s a cool time period where there’s just a lot of lesser-known, but really good, wines available,” she said. “And that’s true for Europe, the U.S., South Africa … Croatia, Slovenia, the country of Georgia.”

‘A cup of water out of the ocean’

Both Brown and Clark have wine-adjacent backgrounds.

Clark worked as a beer writer and brewer, cocktail blogger and for a wine and spirits importer that specialized in everyday table wines.

Brown was a pastry chef at Coco and The Cellar Bar, where she would often sit down with wine representatives.

“I was like, ‘This is something I could totally get into,’ ” Brown said.

Since opening the business, the two have embraced the learning experience that comes with owning a wine store.

“It still feels like a cup of water out of the ocean. There’s so much to learn. Wine, it can literally be a lifelong pursuit of knowledge,” said Brown.

“Wine is a universal beverage,” Clark said. “We came into this really appreciating wine, loving wine, wanting to know more about it, but not being certified sommeliers or anything like that. … Our customers are kind of the same in terms of they have had good wine, they have pretty good palates, but they don’t know a lot about it.

“We’re trying to guide them, and at the same time, we’re learning a lot along the way,” she said.

Part of that learning journey involves tasting every wine they sell and coming up with the words and vocabulary to describe it.

“I think I’ve gotten a handle on ‘flabby,’ ” Brown said with a chuckle. “It’s impossible to describe. It’s usually kind of lacking in acid, like it doesn’t have a backbone, but it’s just kind of a,” she gestured down from her lips to beneath her chin, her fingers spread.

“That is something I’m really excited about, getting weird about coming up with ways to describe different wines,” she said.

Clark added, “I think that’s also part of this broader new wine movement. Are we saying this tastes like white flowers? Or maybe we are saying this is the equivalent of a pretty dress, or this wine is the equivalent of a tailored suit?”

It doesn’t always have to involve comparisons to other foods like fruits and veggies, said Brown. Sometimes it’s better to use shapes or sounds or metaphors to describe a wine.

Throughout the store, examples of that creative approach can be found on handwritten labels in front of each wine reading phrases like “spring meadows after rain” and “a laser beam of minerality.”

The store’s wine selection totals about 300 products, though they are not all individual varietals, and the price range generally falls between $15 and $25.

‘Weird chips,’ beer and more

Wines aren’t the only unique and interesting product coming from around the world at Tip Top; the store also sells a variety of “weird chips” from Japan, China and other countries that sell chips coming in flavors like pizza, ribeye steak and truffles and brown sugar sweet potato.

Brown, a self-proclaimed “aficionado of foreign potato chips for years and years,” thought the hobby might make for a good side hustle at the wine shop.

“It has blown up,” she said. “It’s grown into a thing, like we have people who don’t drink who just come in for the chips.”

The store also offers craft beer, cider and other fermented beverages, nonalcoholic drinks, specialty cheeses and charcuterie, frozen pizzas and other food items.

“For now, it’s about accessibility all around,” said Clark.

“And trying to be very neighborhood-y,” Brown added.

Maddie Fabian can be reached at mfabian@gazettenet.com.