For UBC, this is a pretty good liquor store. There is very little that is over $30 in the store, which means it caters well to students.
I was quite pleased with the breadth of items. They had the popular J Lohr Cabernets and the cheap Lindeman Shiraz and whatnot, but they also had some real QPR (quality price ratio) gems like Chapoutier Bila-Haut Red and White, Besllum, and Louis Latour Bordeaux. Overall, I would say that this store would help serve as an excellent place for people to go and not get concerned about prices while being able to pick up a good breadth of wines to get one's palate accustomed to.
The one thing I wondered about was the staff. Seriously, when the "liquor specialist" doesn't know anything about the wines, and even what 2011 was like for most wines in France compared to 2010 or 2009 (for the record, apparently the latter two are supposed to be "super-years" for anything coming from there whilst 2011 was very mixed) and was like "it seems like you know more than me!" without saying ANYTHING about what he thought of wines from France or Spain, you're basically better off taking a Smartphone and plugging in the names if you wanted.
Cute store that wasn't busy on a Saturday night, though, so you can't be bitter. That's for John Nunziata. read more