I don't really consider myself a "wine guy" (in the sense that I really enjoy wine, but I'm by no…read moremeans an expert or even amateur oenophile - my idea of "laying down" a bottle is saving it for next week) but after visiting a few wine stores in New York, having lived in California for a decade in a county with a dozen vineyards in close driving distance, Trader Joe's, and very wine-oriented restaurants, I am starting to think I may have to reassess that, relatively. Consider that a disclaimer that I suspect your mileage may vary with this particular store.
This store has a small collection that gravitates to the $15 bottle of wine, if I may, which could be nice in and of itself. That's the right range for a quick bottle to go with dinner, but this being New York, you can't get wine in the grocery stores, so you have to remember to make a special trip. Unless you're shopping at the Co-op next door, I don't think this has quite enough of a selection or incredible bargains to make it a "destination" wine store.
The California stock is heavy on the usual suspects from Napa and Sonoma counties; they had very few from the less well-known but significantly better Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara counties, and the staffer who was helping me didn't seem very aware about those vineyards. There were not a lot of South American or Aussie choices, which IMHO have produced some of the tastiest "bargain" wines in the $10-$20 range in recent years. The French selections are heavy on heritage vineyards, and in terms of value or specialness, I wasn't really sent by what was there. The Italians I thought were a poor lot.
The grape selection is also very conservative - heavy on the merlots and chiantis and chardonnays, fewer choices in the cab francs and montepulcianos and pinot gris, if I can use that as a short hand for where I'm coming from in terms of taste. They had some decent syrahs, but nothing in what I'd call "full throat" labels.
I obviously haven't tried every bottle in the joint, so take it fwiw this is just based on the selections I've had before. I will say of the half dozen bottles I took home, letting the staffer make suggestions, we haven't really had more than one bottle that seemed like it was a good wine at the price point.
I give the store plenty of karmic credit, though, for having staff eager to help and coming out from behind the counter to try to answer my questions, and for that reason I'll come back a few more times while I comparison shop the weird world of New York wine sales and see if I can get into the "top shelves" here, as it were.
I didn't look at the liquor in too much detail, as we don't drink a lot, but it seemed like a fairly thin selection. We have a couple of weirdo liquers (the two kinds of chartreuse) we drink on special occasions, that they didnt have, and the single malt scots whiskey selection was unremarkable.
It's a local store, I appreciated their efforts, so as I said it's worth giving an extra shot to. Wine shopping is unusually an individual thing so the three-star rating is purely personal.
