Best Wine Retailers

[Dav1d_Sawyer]

I’ve had terrific service for years from Dan Posner’s store, Grapes, the Wine Company, in North White Plains, NY. They have a very good selection, great prices and they deliver free to Manhattan even for a single bottle. I know they ship to other states.

I should add that I’ve found the recommendations from Bob Millman there almost always suit my palate, and he’s alerted me to a number of offbeat wines I’ve liked, as well as mainstream things like Burgundies. For me, he adds real value.

Oh, and the owner does respond to customers.

What ever happened to Posner on the board? He used to be a regular participant way back in the day.

[John_Kight]

• Envoyer- amazing prices, especially for champagne, and they deliver cross-country via refrigerated shipping (except delivery day itself)

I think they’ve even started using temp-control on delivery day. My most recent delivery on a hot summer day came in Dallas to my house in a van with a wine-branded sign on top (Something like “Vino-Vehicle”). The wine was chilled. It’s possible that the vehicle wasn’t ‘refrigerated’ per se, and was simply air conditioned for the driver’s comfort (such that the wine was still cold from before it was loaded), but it didn’t appear to have a separate cargo hold that could be any hotter than the vehicle itself.

[CJ_Beazley]

• Envoyer- amazing prices, especially for champagne, and they deliver cross-country via refrigerated shipping (except delivery day itself)

I think they’ve even started using temp-control on delivery day. My most recent delivery on a hot summer day came in Dallas to my house in a van with a wine-branded sign on top (Something like “Vino-Vehicle”). The wine was chilled. It’s possible that the vehicle wasn’t ‘refrigerated’ per se, and was simply air conditioned for the driver’s comfort (such that the wine was still cold from before it was loaded), but it didn’t appear to have a separate cargo hold that could be any hotter than the vehicle itself.

I was just at Envoyer and Greg said they had found a door to door cold shipping chain to Texas.
I found some bottles at B-21 recently and their shipping seemed really really high.

[MChang]

www.empirewine.com

Empirewine would actually be on my list; I’ve been cleaning up the cellar and found probably 10 cases I’ve gotten recently which have been great wines at excellent prices. They also have very nice packaging and ship super quickly.

[John_Glas]

Chamber Street
Saratoga Wine Exchange
Bassins / MacArthur (but I can do local pickup)

Those are the three I use most and have had great service from all of them.

Just doing a search on some wines and Saratoga had some great prices and did not know they ship to MN. Looks like a new operation I will do business with.

[Larry_G0ld3n]

Used to be advocate for B21. Now, NFW
Yes to Sokolin
Yes to JJB

[Max_S1]

Retailer experiences:

EmpireWine: great prices, customer service generally gets it done
Saratoga Wine: great prices, good Loire Valley selection, decent Gattinara selection, have Vallana but not the Gattinara anymore
WineWorks: great prices, decent customer service
FirstBottle: okay pricing, great CS
WineAccess: pricing is hit or miss, coupons help even things out and bring some high prices down to reasonable. CS is unmatched in my experience
Invino: good prices, CS is quick on the response, haven’t had any issues
Wine.com: coupons generally needed, though some bottles are priced well, coupons help a lot, as does StewardShip. CS is solid in my experience
WineLibrary: Great prices on wine, free shipping is expensive at $100, but worth it if you buy volume. Selection changes often, though there seems to be inventory struggles. CS is responsive, inventory seems to lag a bit

[mike_basile]

WineAccess is pretty solid and they are cold chain until the home delivery leg. Never had issues with WineLibrary or Wine.com, but they are churn and burn style retailers. Not sure I would trust them with anything super sensitive.

Wine Library has a large cold room on the second floor that is fun to explore whenever I visit the store.

[GregT]

I would like to get some opinions on the best (online) wine retailers in the US. Are there any retailers who have temperature controlled storage?

Thank You!

You do realize that the entire point of a retail shop is to move product out the door? So storage isn’t something I would expect. Some will keep until shipping season, but that’s pretty much it unless you want to pay a fee for some storage site nearby. As to “best” as others have said, it depends on what you mean.

Chambers has one of the better selections of older wines and they don’t mark them up to silly prices. Wine Library still has a huge selection and they run deals every so often. K&L and Winex on the west coast are discounters like Wine Library and they rely on volume movement. Sometimes they have interesting wines that they bring in themselves, so they’re worth looking at. In NYC, PJ Wine at one time had the best selection of Spanish wines in the country, but that was a while ago under prior management. Sherry-Lehman is one of the oldest shops around and they’re good if you want to find futures on Bordeaux. And out in White Plains is Grapes the Wine Company, which has a nice collection and great service.

In Berkeley, you can’t forget Kermit Lynch, who in a way was a pioneer for all the little specialty wine shops. Rare Wine Company is another one that tries to source older wines. But then there are a few specialty dealers that do primarily that, like CellarRaiders.

As to storage, don’t sweat that too much. Your wine is a bit hardier than many people think and at somewhere along the supply chain route, it was NOT in cold storage.

So it really depends on what you’re looking for and when.

[david_paly]

Woodland Hills is excellent- selection, prices and service. The unmentioned gorilla in this thread are 1) diminishing states to which you can ship from retail 2) sales tax charged. There seems to be a great deal of variation on both of these even coming from the same state. K and L has dropped out of state shipping largely and Rare Wine Co will ship to OR but not WA for example. Rye Brook does not charge sales tax for out of state but Sokolin and Morrell do. Getting to be quite a game.

[doug_johnson]

• Calvert Woodley - another local store that sometimes has amazing deals on good stuff

Any specifics you recall? My impression whenever I stop by and browse is that their pricing is pretty poor on stuff I like. Eg, 2020 Lapierre Morton at $42 vs $30 at Bassin’s.

[Brian_Pinci]

• Calvert Woodley - another local store that sometimes has amazing deals on good stuff

Any specifics you recall? My impression whenever I stop by and browse is that their pricing is pretty poor on stuff I like. Eg, 2020 Lapierre Morton at $42 vs $30 at Bassin’s.

They have nice sales every now and then when you can get things cheaper than Bassins, but not too often. Although, I have been to some incredible wine dinners sponsored by them

[Michael_Ch3rn3y]

Flickinger for access to aged wines with some of the best prices in the country retail

[Howard_Cooper]

The two stores I buy the most from are Bassins (MacArthur) and Envoyer.

[John_Glas]

JJ Buckley Private Client is one of the best.

[Jay_Miller]

Favorites:
Chambers St.
Flatiron - I’ve only picked up in person there but have heard good things about their shipping
Benchmark

Places I’ve bought occasionally and been very happy:
SommPicks
R Squared
Saratoga
Down to Earth

When Vinopolis would still ship to NJ I loved them

[Jayson_Cohen]

Some good ones mentioned already. I’ll add:

Rye Brook Wines for selection & prices (though their shipping has gone up recently)
B-21

Just curious if anyone here has ever been to the Rye Brooke brick and mortar store. What an experience! I was in the area about a year ago and stopped in out of curiosity. Not what I expected at all!

First of all, it’s a little store front in a suburban strip mall. Second, they were closed even though I arrived 45min after they were supposed to open. Eventually some guy unlocked the door and when I walked in I was greeted with scream-o heavy metal blasting out of the stereo. There were a few nice wines on the shelves, but also lots of mass-market stuff. I asked the guy behind the counter a few questions and he clearly had no clue what he was talking about.

At first I thought I might have the wrong place, but then a customer walked in, said he had an order waiting for him, and someone came out of the back with some real quality stuff. I didn’t want to be too nosy but saw a few PYCMs, a Clos de Vougeot, along with some other stuff I didn’t get a glimpse at. I asked the worker where all the other wines were stored and he said that there is a gigantic basement where most of their stock is kept along with another storage facility off site.

I know many retailers only have a small percentage of their inventory out on the floor, but you usually get a sense if a store is quality when you walk in. Chambers Street feels like a place that sells nice stuff, as does FlatI\iron, Zachys, a few other places I’ve been. Not Rye Brooke! They’ve got great stuff, but what a weird place!

I’ve been curious to check it out. You just saved me a trip to that corner of Westchester.

I indulged that curiosity in summer 2019. Not really worth it. Some interesting wine on the shelves but they are listed online and most stock is offsite. And it does look like your typical strip mall wine-liquor store.

[jnbrown]

Wine.com has worked out well for me.
Descent selection, prices are on the high side but with discounts its a wash.
The free shipping for a year is great, but since they are in the bay area and I am in San Diego 500 miles away ground shipments go through the central valley which is really hot half of the year. So it ends up being effectively only half a year of free shipping. I did use overnight shipping once and the extra cost was not that much after all the discounts.
The nice thing is I can order one bottle to try and not worry about shipping cost.