I live in San Francisco so for me it’s K&L by a mile. I also have wine waiting for me at Rare Wine Company, JJ Buckley and The Wine Club.
- Down To Earth Wines
- Chambers Street
honorable mention:
Brown Derby
Weygant
MacArthur
Laurenti
This was mostly a joke, though I have and do buy from them, but less than I used to.
Over the last several years, my biggest buying has been from Chambers St and Rare Wine Co. This is in part because they are great companies to work with and because I’m buying more older wines and am very concerned about provenance.
Others I buy from in recent years include PC, Flickinger, HDH, WHWC, Wine Library, Wine Legend, BPW, Benchmark, Vintages (Concord, MA), Primo Vino (Colorado), and CellaRaiders.
K & L has the best web site, good service and reasonable shipping. They always deliver. On the other hand, they lately seem bent on getting $5 per bottle the same wine offered by their competitors. I research a lot of purchases there and then hit Wine Searcher and end up buying it somewhere else. They lose out of the case top-offs when my futures orders come in too.
So I buy BDX futures mostly from JJ Buckley. They have really good deals with the Preferred Client program. Chris Greene does a nice job for me there. I buy most of my red Burgundies from Woodland Hills. Great service there from Tim Snyder and the crew.
I find good prices at Vinopolis too.
For back filing, I have the most luck (by far) at Hart Davis Hart. They are always rolling out beautiful collections and I’ve never had a shot bottle (knocking on all wood).
Happy hunting!
Gary’s New Jersey.
Truth be told don’t do much retail purchases these days. Needs to be a very special offer.
K & L was a long term source, but lately have bought close to home in PNW & Norcal.
Full Pull
Sec Wines
In order of quantity, probably:
JJ Buckley
K&L
Premier Cru
Rare Wine Co.
Last Bottle
Wine Library
Crush
Actually, one of the ways I limit my buying is to limit the stores I buy from. This prevents me from filling up cases at shipping time at too many retailers. I currently buy from:
Wine Library (27% of 2013)
JJ Buckley (10.5%)
K&L wines (7%)
Rare Wine Company (5.4%)
Someday one of those emails from Chambers will break me, but my willpower has lasted thus far…
Woodland Hills for their wide selection
Macarthur’s (Bassin’s) for German wines and some Burgundies
Vinopolis
I don’t know that you can consider Rare Wine an “on line” retailer since, although they have a website, you can’t purchase online.
I think Zachy’s is overpriced. I use Wine Buyer and Gary’s.
I looked at 2013. Was really surprised to find how little wine I purchased in a traditional ‘on line’ manner; so where i went to a site and clicked some virtual buttons, and some wine later arrived.
For that, I ordered only from Premier Cru and from MacArthur. That’s it.
In many other cases, I found something on a site, emailed or called the store to negotiate volume or price or delivery. Not sure that ‘counts’ in the same way?
If on-line counts as wine purchased because I ‘saw’ it on-line, though did not order it on-line, then more stores come in.
Premier Cru
MacArthur
Manhattan Wine Co.
Voix de la Terre.
Vintages of Mass
Wine Cellarage
Flickinger
Dudley Jones
Uncorked
Rare Wine
Grapes
I am buying from Down to Earth, Fass, JJ B and probably PC if I see something that is a great deal as I now have all my wines from them that I would expect to be available at this point. I am going to focus more on buying from retailers on the same side of the country as me in the future. It seems absurd to have the wine travel across the US twice before it reaches my cellar.
I receive email from them and order via email, hence I purchase from them using the internet.
That adds up to less than 50%. You got some splainin to do.
K&L is a staple for me, but was glad to see Gary’s on a few posts. Good service and some really interesting selections.
It always surprises me that really smart people on this board keep buying from Premier Cru? I dropped them many years ago and excluded them from my Winesearcher search results.
Here are the real class of online retailers, IMO. These guys are; prompt, rarely make mistakes, are flexible, patient and have consistently competitive shipping to the midwest.
Woodland Hills
K & L
Rare Wine Co
Envoyer ( forget them on my original post and they’re great too! )
Also have had good luck with Vinopolis out of Oregon.
I’ve noticed, generally, I get better service with fewer errors from west coast stores vs. east coast.
the remainder is winery direct, LWS, and auctions.
And I thought I was prone to generalities;)
I haven’t notice this phenomenon. Good/bad pretty much everywhere…Left Coast, Right Coast, Midwest.
Right Coast favs at this point are Wine Library and Garnet.
FWIW - the highest error rate retailer I’ve encountered is JJB/WC - Left Coast, as relates to stuff I defer shipping on and hold in storage there. They always make it right, I like them, but it’s still a bit of a pain, thinking you have something in impending/stored inventory, only to find out “no…you don’t”.
Chris, which shops do you use locally?
Haskell’s
WineStreets
Surdyk’s
South Lyndale
France 44
At least one of these is worth buying from. I do also buy from Haskell’s on every day wines but anything over $30 is over priced!