Call it snobbism, since there’s no kinder word. Until last week I patronized fashionable wine boutiques far and wide while ignoring my unassuming neighborhood wine shop on the Upper West Side. That was my loss. I sometimes stopped into the predecessor to the shop, now called Martin Brothers Wines & Liquors, at the corner of Broadway and 107th Street, in a long-ago incarnation as a Cuban-American bodega. Hanging inside its east-facing window, full to the morning sun, were the Upper West Side’s most perfectly ripe bananas: lightly speckled but never too soft. I always looked forward to exchanging pleasantries with the proprietor when I bought my bananas.

In 1986, the bodega was transformed into a wine and liquor shop. My long-held assumption was that it was a place where booze was the priority and the wide universe of wine was constricted to standard brands. How wrong I was. When I recently deigned to enter Martin Brothers, I discovered a wealth of wines I had assumed could only be found on the shelves of the city’s most recherché wine boutiques. They ranged from young rarities like Columella 2002 ($74), a tiny production syrah and mourvedre blend of unsurpassed quality from South Africa, to older rarities like magnums of Ecard’s Savignyles-Beaune “Les Lavieres” 1993 ($99), a red Burgundy now at its apogee. I even spotted a nearly century-old Madeira, the Barbeito Verdelho Reserva 1912 ($195). There were offbeat bargains as well, such as the delicious “l’Exception” Bourgogne Passetoutgrain 2003 ($19) from Domaine Lafarge, a tiptop Volnay grower, and a great value in dessert wine, Samos Vin Douce Moscato ($16), from the eponymous Greek island. And yes, the standard brands, including Yellow Tail, are also available.

“Between the bodega and this wine shop, our family has been in business in the neighborhood for 40 years,” proprietor Mike Martin, 34, told me. “My dad, Orlirio, had sailed over from Cuba in 1960 after he figured out what Castro was all about.” The boat was blown off course to Mexico, but Mr. Martin’s father made his way to New York, working in a meat market before opening the bodega with his brother, Roberto. “When they converted to a liquor store, the first Sunday came, and they were closed by law. My dad told me that it felt weird. Until then, he had never taken a day off work in 20 years.”

Mr. Martin, who worked for his father and uncle from age 6, took over as the shop’s wine director in 1996. “My game plan was to bring in a big selection not seen in other stores — allocated items, honest items, good items. I wanted the wines that nobody knows about. So I put on the blinders and said, ‘Let’s go. We have wines from the Jura in France, the former Soviet Georgia, and Hungary.” And not only wines. Mr. Martin pointed to the highest shelf behind the shop’s counter, lined with more than 150 labels of single malt scotch whiskey. Though a dedicated neighborhood shop, Martin Brothers also boasts corporate clients including, according to Mr. Martin, the financial firm AXA and Rockefeller University.

“I can’t be doing the same routine every day,” Mr. Martin said. “There have to be new goals set and achieved.” An early goal was to hold a charity tasting of as many vintages as he could gather of Chateau Haut Brion. In 2000, the tasting, comprising 35 vintages of the great Bordeaux ranging from 1908 to 1997, was held for 19 enthusiasts at the now closed restaurant Côte Basque. In 2003, Mr. Martin conducted another charity tasting, this one limited to a dozen wines from the highly praised 1928 vintage.

One evening a few years ago, Mr. Martin said, “It suddenly triggered in me that I didn’t just want to sell wine off the shelf. I wanted to make it.” In short order, he and Patrick Mata, a wine importer and friend, flew to Spain on a six-day scouting mission. They settled on a very old, 35-acre Monastrell (a rich, dark red grape best known as Mourvèdre in France) vineyard in the Yecla region of southeast Spain. With Mr. Mata and four other partners, including winemaker Emili Esteve, Mr. Martin founded Bellum, a winery named after a local prehistoric cave painting of warring bears.

In a world crowded with warring wineries, Bellum could have easily gone unnoticed. But Robert M. Parker Jr., the world’s reigning wine critic, praised Bellum’s ultraflavorful first releases, the dry red Providencia 2003 ($15) and the sweet red El Remate 2003 ($30), as “one of the top discoveries of all my tastings.” Within 24 hours of that review, Bellum 2003 was sold out. In 2004, a third wine, called El Principio ($20), sourced from select vineyard blocks, was added. Currently, all Bellum wines are 100% Monastrell, but “our goal is to make our next wine from several grape varieties,” Mr. Martin said. He will go to Yecla in April to participate in “blending and tasting” of the 2006 vintage.

What’s next for the ever restless Mr. Martin? “I do have one more tasting idea up my sleeve,” he said. “I’ve already done my vertical [multiple vintages of a single wine] and my horizontal [multiple wines in a single vintage]. Now I’d like to do a tasting of a dirty dozen of the greatest wines of all time. I’ll assemble a panel to pick them. Unfortunately, there are a lot of skunky old bottles out there. The challenge will not be so much to find the bottles, but to find good-drinking bottles.”

Martin Brothers Wine & Spirits, 2781 Broadway at 107th Street, 212-222-8218. Closed Sundays.