Jason Hagen wrote:Well they are 1 billion times better than BevMo but I generally try to take my business elsewhere when it comes to wine. Great beer and spirits selection which I do purchase from them. Generally the employees no nothing about wine. The annoying part is they want to talk to you about it. On occasion they will have Champagne at really nice prices which when combined with their coupons works out really well. My store, has the best local selection of Ridge wine as well. I was in there the other day and they had 5 or 6 different bottlings at very good prices.
Jason
Jason covered the points I would cover, so I'll just add to them. I live in a small town. We have 1.5 independent wine stores, but they're very small and where the owners are geeks of my ilk, of course they have to supply the pointy people as well as the clueless. Our two Food Coops also have great wine departments, but they're tiny (about half a typical Total Wine aisle) and oriented toward under-$30 options, which isn't a lot even though they're oriented toward better value imports that I also love. And that means that a lot of the wines I'd like to experience because I read about them on line have to be procured elsewhere or even out of state.
So yes Total Wine is a big corporate jerk. But the comparisons to Walmart/Target are ridiculous. Not even close. As Jason says, a billion times better than BevMo (I must laugh, as there is one of those in this town too but so bad is it that I didn't even think to mention it when listing what's available here. I hate them, they ARE the Walmart/Target.) Sure, Total Wine has a lot of junk, which as someone pointed out is necessary, and a lot of "winery-direct" brands that seem to be a combination of legit exclusive imports and domestic negociant brands, both with higher profit margins so the more clueless attendants will push those on you, but they also have stuff someone like me sees nowhere else.
Sure, most of the employees are dunderheads--there's a lot of square footage there and they can't train 'em fast or hard enough to deal with geeks like us--but amongst them is the occasional serious wine geek. I've found one at one of the stores in the Seattle area and when I'm in town I often stop in and ask for her. In fact, she's become a personal friend. She's a serious Bordeaux freak (and Total Wine has more Bordeaux than anyone in the state) but also a fan and student of wine in general--she doesn't hate the wines she doesn't love. She has a Coravin and a stash of spendy stuff in back that she sometimes offers me tastes of.
Once when I asked about Portugese wines (for which I had scheduled a themed tasting before realizing there were NO Portugese wines locally), she got permission to open a dozen or so bottles so that I could make an informed selection. My question made her realize that neither she nor anyone else in the store actually had the experience to sell those wines, and so they benefitted too.
At her store off the top of my head I've found vintage Madeira, Rochioli Sauv Blancs, Bevan wines, white burgs from Etienne Sauzet, Philiponnat champagnes, some great little Loire Vouvrays, and Ridge Geyserville and Lytton Springs at close to $10/bottle less than they were priced at in B'ham.
For the big neighborhood wine tastings I do, when I have holes in my lineup I can always, ALWAYS find both the right type of wine and enough bottles of it (another local problem, distributors put up just three-four bottles at a time and I usually need 5-6 of each) to satisfy my needs.
For all kinds of reasons I do try to shop local. I never walk into the local wine stores and leave without buying a bottle, NEVER. I love that they're here and I carefully support what they do. But I sure am happy to have Total Wine as a back-up even if it's 90 miles away.
Point is, I get that Total Wine does a lot of things wrong, but they do a lot of things right. Yes they have the kind of stuff that the Target-level wine shopper wants, but they also have things that picky, geeky buyers like me are happy to find.
