Wine buffs can be quite snooty about where you should buy your wine. To them, supermarkets are a definite no-no. I used to agree that it was hard to find many decent wines in a supermarket. But recently, a couple of our supermarket chains have been selling some really tasty wines at affordable prices.
Apart from that, I’m a member of a mail order/internet wine club called The Wine Society. Their wines are very individual and very good.
I do use small independent wine merchants from time to time. How good they are depends on how closely the owner’s tastes correlate to mine. So it can be a bit hit and miss until I find a good match. Sadly, though, they seem to be disappearing at an alarming rate; like many smaller retailers, they are probably finding it hard to compete with the big boys.
My state government insists that I buy it from the corner liquor store. No supermarkets or internet sales allowed. Oddly, they don’t allow the liquor/wine stores to sell anything else. No beer, no chips, no nudie magazines.
I guess they have that law in place to protect me from this wine snobbery problem.
My BIL owns a winery, and makes some excellent wines. He has no problem buying from a supermarket if it’s the right wine, though he rarely needs to. I don’t think most wine connoisseurs really care where the bottle was purchased, except for price. I’ve never heard anyone complain about buying wine from a supermarket.
I have a very nice wine shop right down the street from my house, but when headed north for the weekend I usually stop at the NH State Liquor stores along I-93.
The supermarket is the best wine store in my small town. Seriously. And yes, we have 1 other smaller store that attempts to specialize in wine, but does a miserable job. So the supermarket it is, and they honestly don’t do a bad job. That said, they don’t do a great job, either.
Most of my wine is purchased via the Internet and shipped in, from web sites such as winestilsoldout.com and a few other retailers who have good web sites. I also go out of town once or twice a year and purchase 3-5 (or more, depending on the finances) cases at a time.
I find even after paying for shipping, it’s break-even or cheaper for me to buy from out of town. Wine prices here are astonishing - a bottle of champagne I bought out-of-town a couple months ago for $35 was $60 at the local store. WTF?!?
Most of my wine I pick up at wineries. They have great prices, of course, as well as case discounts.
But when I’m not down on Long Island, I go to any of several liquor stores that specialize in wine. New York doesn’t allow wine sales in groceries, which is just as well, since I would expect groceries to only stock mass produced wines, whereas a good wine shop sells things with some character to them. There are three very good wine-centered liquor stores withing a ten minute drive of me.
Occasionally Bevmo, but mostly through wine clubs. We belong to both Mandolina and Fess Parker. The former keeps us supplied with Italian-style wines from Santa Barbara, and the latter keeps us afloat in Syrah and Pinot Noir from the Santa Ynez Valley.
Lots of places. Trader Joe’s, The Wine & Cheese Place, since there is one near us, and sometimes directly from the wineries, though I’ve found that for local wines, the ones that are available outside the wineries are cheaper at the grocery store or wine store.
The closest regular grocery store to us also sells a lot of wine, but we don’t pick up much wine there, since it’s still cheaper to get it from the wine shop, and the wine shops having tastings, too.
There are many choices in this town, and supermarkets carry quality wines here. I read an article some time ago about Costco’s wine buyer, who actually knows his stuff. They usually have a very good selection, with ratings posted, etc.
Mostly from the wineries themselves. Most wineries in the area offer an inter-winery discount to growers and wine industry workers, so it’s usually worth it for me to drive out to a place if there’s something in particular I really want. And my husband and I go tasting fairly often and will usually end up buying a case worth of wine when we do.
We each tend to buy at different retailers though.
He’s a member of one of the local gourmet Italian deli’s wine club because he tends to favor Italian wines. The place has a large variety of all wines but is heavy on Italian reds.
So he buys mostly at Traverso’s, BevMo, and Trader Joe’s.
I usually stop into Bottle Barn once a week or so because the selection is enormous and the prices are reasonable. And it’s on my way home from work.
Same with Oliver’s Market which is where I tend to do most of my grocery shopping. It’s nice that they have such a great beer and wine selection as well.
And lastly, when I’m looking for something really obscure or special, I call or pop into Wine Spectrum. They are the guys that can get just about anything.
I also buy from work, and we’re gifted a couple of cases worth of wine a year.
And my husband and I make our own, which should keep us in supply for quite awhile.
He’s the winemaker for Pelligrini, but he runs Premium Wine Group, a contract winery that produces wine for many North Fork wineries:
Ackerly Pond Vineyards
Bridge Vineyards
Baiting Hollows Farm Vineyard
Comtesse Therese
Clovis Point
Homard
Lieb Family Cellars
Manor Hill Vineyards
Martha Clara Vineyards
Old Brookville Vineyard
Schneider Vineyards
Sherwood House Vineyard
Sparkling Pointe Vineyard
His own label is Pumphouse, and my sister’s is Suhru. Lots of wine to choose from.
The most popular option seems to be from the wineries themselves. I envy you the ability to that. Where I live in the UK, I do have a couple of wineries that make a decent white wine, but it’s nothing like the choice or quality that you have access to.
An advantage we have here in the UK is that, possibly because we’re not (yet) an established wine producing country, we import wines from throughout the world. I enjoy the huge variety, and try to keep on experimenting.
Funnily enough, the one country that I’ve always thought we should have a large selection from is the States. Yet we don’t, and what we have, apart from the likes of Gallo, tend to be of the more expensive type.
Wineries. Every year I spend Thanksgiving in California, so if I need wine, I go early and take a side trip. Just got back from Sonoma.
My local co-op has a small selection, but they do a great job of ferreting out highly rated, inexpensive wines. I like to cook with good wine, so I buy these for that purpose.
I’m not buying anything over $10 without tasting it first.
He’s done contract work for many of the wineries on the North Fork.
