03/06/2026
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A Gem on Madison Avenue
By Door County Pulse, Peninsula Pulse — March 5th, 2026
Dede McCartney has polished her shop to perfection over 20 years
by DAN POWERS
Peninsula Pulse contributor
What makes a gem a gem? More specifically, how does a small shop and its owner come to be regularly referred to as a gem?
As Madison Avenue Market (Wine Shop) celebrates 20 years in business, its owner, Diana (Dede) McCartney, seems to have earned the title the old-fashioned way.
McCartney’s earlier debut business ownership endeavor was Java on Jefferson, a coffee shop on Sturgeon Bay’s East Side. It came about, she told me, “because I like coffee.”
After researching the Java world and business, she opened in 2000. Bakery goods followed, then a few gift items. She reminisced about how she “really enjoyed it, especially the people.” (Full disclosure: Java on Jefferson was my belated maiden voyage into cappuccinos, lattes and scones. I got hooked.)
However, in 2001, she faced a choice. Her shop was thriving, but so was her husband Mike McCartney’s career as a caricature artist. Running her shop while managing the art show business and traveling most weekends to and from dog shows – her husband’s specialty – became too much. She sold the business.
Jump ahead a few years to a rainout at a dog show in New York’s Finger Lakes wine region and a glass of Riesling. Somehow, McCartney, who said she had never been much of a wine drinker, was unexpectedly smitten with the world of vino.
But, she explained, “I felt the only way to actually learn about wine was to work with it.” So, for the time being, she tucked the idea away.
Then, in 2006, while walking along Madison Avenue on Sturgeon Bay’s West Side, serendipity struck. She spotted a vacant shop space and said she immediately fell in love with the architecture, imagining it as the perfect spot for a wine shop. She leaped back into business ownership.
Ironically, as with her former coffee shop, the space had once been a doctor’s office. Removing the lowered ceiling revealed height and possibility, and she set about bringing her vision for the new shop to life. She purchased an antique, 13-foot scrolled oak-and-marble Birkenwald Co. bakers’ counter, a weathered local sliding barn door that hangs behind it, and wooden and iron shelving from the ReStore. A local carpenter helped create the sampling area.
The results reflect what she said is her love of rustic, earthy French country style. Along the high walls, she hung enlarged local historic sepia-toned photos and other prints, along with some of her husband’s works, “because everybody loves dogs.” Confronted with a front sidewalk rather than the flower beds she meticulously cared for at her coffee shop, McCartney now channels that attention into intricate window displays and seasonal window boxes.
Then the wine orders began arriving.
“I almost threw in the towel,” she admitted. “I wasn’t sure I could do it.”
She remembers sitting on the store floor near tears, surrounded by stacks of wine boxes, with no real idea of what was what or how to sort it.
“I learned through the school of hard knocks,” she said, sharing the credit for her built knowledge with supportive sales reps who helped her learn the wine.
Owner Diana (Dede) McCartney, who opened her shop 20 years ago. Photo by Remy Carmichael.
As before, it was the people who made the challenges worthwhile. McCartney has a remarkable ability to remember customers – not just what they like, but what’s been going on in their lives. Even out-of-town visitors who stop in a few times a year can pick up conversations as if no time has passed. Nearly everyone who walks in seems ready to chat or ask for wine advice. That says a lot about McCartney, who describes herself, outside the shop, as tending toward shy.
A year after opening, she began selling olive oil – a decision she said she now sees as an early turning point. In the first two days after her stock arrived, she sold 48 bottles, and sales haven’t stopped. After that, she added cheeses, Italian foods, crackers and other specialty items.
In 2017, the shop next door became available.
“So, we busted a wall [connecting the two spaces] and expanded into gifts of all kinds,” she said.
The additional space allowed her to broaden the curated items and create a room designed for browsing and lingering. For a time, she made soups and sandwiches in a small kitchen, but now limits herself to making treats for the wine samplers. With the changes came a new name: Madison Avenue Market.
Business savvy and product knowledge matter. So do taste and atmosphere. But what truly makes McCartney – and her team, including full-time employee Dawn, and wine-sampling hostess, June – a “gem” is the way customers are treated as a person, not a sale. It’s something I felt the first time I stopped, and she introduced me to a Pino Noir I still love.
And that brings us back to the question of what makes a gem.
Gemstones form over time, under pressure. In the right hands, they can be cut and, in the hands of a conscientious expert, polished into something unique, desirable, enduring and fun. Over two decades, that is exactly what McCartney has done.
While I was interviewing her, a young woman stopped in and made this very point. After they’d chatted and ‘caught up,’ I asked why she frequented the Market. She looked at the armful of items she was holding and then at McCartney and smiled.
“It’s just fun to come in here,” she said.
