How to Pick a Wine Shop
Tips and suggestions including merchants in New Jersey
The four things you need to know about shopping for wine, with some examples from the Delaware Valley.
What should you look for in a wine shop? There are four things to keep in mind.
1) Selection
It’s easy to be fooled about the range of a wine shop’s selection.Having thousands of bottles to choose from isn't the same thing as having a good selection. Many of the large discount stores simply pile in the wine, focussing on the labels that are most heavily advertised and the ones sold to them at the deepest discount. Sometimes, what looks like a football field’s worth of choices is really just the same few bottlles repeated over and over.
A good selection is one that's been carefully picked by a knowledgeable wine buyer. It represents a range of tastes and styles and prices. It can comfort you with its familiarity and surprise you with its novelty. You're much better off choosing from a few hundred wines that have been tasted by someone in the store than from a few thousand that came in by the carload.
2) Storage
Wine stored at temperatures over 80 degrees quickly loses its flavor.
That's why wines are often made and stored underground. It also explains why the bottle of wine that you left in the hot beach house doesn't taste as good.as the one you drank right away. Shipboard containers, tractor trailers and uncooled warehouses do the same nasty thing. Look for a store where the staff is wearing sweaters in summer, a sure sign that the place is well-cooled and the wine is happy. If there’s no cashmere in sight, maybe you shouldn’t be either.
3) Information
A good wine store is a good source of information. Sometimes wine merchants have merchandise that they were forced to buy and they may want to dump it on you. It's a good idea to ask the wine guy to recommend a few bottles. If you like what you bought, if there are no more than one or two obvious losers, then you may want to keep doing business at that store.
4) Price
Wine prices vary widely and I have never found one store that's consistently lower than all its competitors. Even the big discount shops are not reliable money savers. The best way to save money is to subscribe to the various newsletters that the shops mail out to their customers. Remember that the only real saving is a good price on a wine that you enjoy, and that there's nothing special about a 'special' on bad wine.
(A special fifth category includes Convenience Parking and Access. These matter especially when you’re buying a commodity that’s heavy and unwieldy, like a couple of cases of wine.)
If you're in the Deleware Valley area, here is a selection of merchants:
Canal's Rt. 70, Marlton, NJ (aka The Bottlestop) 856-983-4991
Selection: This is a wine-oriented store with over 7,000 different labels. “We specialize in California boutique wines, names like Babcock, Mueller, Au Bon Climat and Pride.”says wine-buyer Charlie Beatty.
Offers an extensive Italian selection, more than 60 Bordeaux and many from Southern France.In the last year, Charlie has traveled in Spain, Chile and Argentina and the shelves reflect his travels with dozens of wines and a few stunning bottles from grape varieties that we don't see much here like Tannat and Malbec.
Storage: “All our wine is stored in two rooms where the temperature is between 48 and 52 degrees," says Beatty. And heat-spoiled bottles? “Everything is guaranteed. If it's spoiled, bring it back.”
Information: “Someone in the store has tasted every quality wine we carry. One of our owners is a fanatical cook and I get e-mail every day from customers with feedback about wine they bought here and food they ate it with. We take pride in the number of people who send their friends to us because of the great wine we suggest.”
Price: Canal's is part of a consortium of stores that licenses the Canal name and pools the buying power. “We mark up our wine about 25% and we can match wholesale club prices.” Canal's also publishes a monthly wine letter with their specials-for a free subscription, call the store or e-mail canalsmarlton@msn.com. Many knowledgeable wine-lovers feel that this store has the best prices within a fifty-mile radius of Philadelphia.
Convenience: This store faces the road in a strip mall immediately after the intersection of Rt. 70 and 73 on the way to LBI.
Moore Brothers Wine Company, 7200 N Park Dr., Pennsauken NJ 888-68 MOORE
Selection: The number varies with the season, but this is a small store and there are never more than 350 to 400 labels in stock. Most of them are from Southern France and Italy.
Storage: “We think we're unique in the United States” says owner Greg Moore. “We can look every customer in the face and say that our wine has been held at 55 degrees since it left the farm.” The store itself advertises the fact and everyone who works there has a sweater on in July.
Information: Moore Brothers relies on a mailing list of 16,000 and an e-mail list of 5,000 to get the word out. Since most of their wines are produced in very small amounts, timeliness is important. The staff is very knowledgeable.
Price: Because of the boutique atmosphere and Moore's long association with Le Bec Fin, many people expect high prices. Greg instists however, that the average bottle of wine in his store costs only $12.
Convenience: Located in a small industrial park beside the Cooper River, just off the Ben Franklin and about five minutes out of the way for any of the major roads east.
Total Wine and More, Cherry Hill Mall, Rt. 38 NJ no phone
Selection: A salesman in the store guessed that there were 'at least 8,000 bottles' on the shelves. Most regions were well represented, and a lot of the depth seemed to be in the budget category.
Storage: The store was decidedly warm, but turnover may minimize the damage. Buy a bottle or two first to be sure.
Information: There's a full-time wine specialist on the floor and Total Wine publishes a quarterly price guide that’s a textbook in itself. You can usually find salesmen from various wine distributors in attendance acting as substitute sales help and glad to talk about their products.
Price: On name brands and advertised specials, Total Wine's prices are very low. For more exclusive wines, they seem to be in the middle of the pack.
Convenience: There's a well thought out little jug handle that takes you from Rt. 38 to the Cherry Hill Mall-a three minute detour.
PLCB (State Store) 1218 Chestnut St.
Selection: A good-sized, smart selection with a mix of advertised and establish labels as well as some relative unknowns - a great store for browsing.
Storage: Management assures us that the goal is to keep the store in the 65-70F degree range. We'll see.
Information: State Store have earned a reputation for offering no information about the products they sell. A small, dedicated band of wine-lovers inside the PLCB seems determined to change that and you can look forward to knowledgeable employees as well as ready reference books in all of the so-called Super Stores.
Price: Most wines will be one to three dollars more expensive in Pennsylvania than in the best stores in Jersey, but there are still some bargains to be found because the State buys in such huge quantities. Look for the brilliantly conceived ‘Chairman’s Selections’, but try a bottle before you buy a case.
Convenience: If you're in Philadelphia and you've got someone to wait in the car for you, it’s not bad but parking is expensive and annoying otherwise.
