Total Wine is coming to Minneapolis -St Paul Metro - What should we expect?

On the surface kind of excited about this. Looks like an expansion of products and lower everyday pricing that will help drive down prices in twin cities metro while bringing in what looks to be a pretty nice store. Whats your actual experience where you live?

Great beer and spirits selection. Not so much wine for ppl on WB. Coupons come in handy. It’s a welcome addition. Don’t expect a broad fund of knowledge from staff.

Agree - great beer and spirits selection, wine not so much.

JKim nailed it. They opened in Las Vegas +/-2 years ago. Expansive selection of beers and liquor, good selection of wine. I only buy wine when they offer the $15 or $20 off $100 purchase. Great opportunity to stock up on daily drinkers.

I’ve enjoyed the beer selection, which is 95% by-the-bottle and the staff is extremely knowledgeable (in this department). All the wine assistance seems to steer towards “Winery Direct” wines which is typically code for Total’s store brands.

They will offer GREAT coupons at opening - take advantage of those

As far as the wine goes, they have good beer. They have a few wines of interest if you select carefully. I would stay away from most of their store selections.

Once in a blue moon they have an amazing wine close out. 1998 G. Mascarello Monprivato for $40 and the 1995 Ca d’Morissio for $80 minus a case discount. Several people here (including me) really stocked up. The 98 is among the most easy drinking Monprivatos ever. Nice house wine. :wink:

I agree. Amazing coupon

When one opened in my area I left with a ton of beer (along with the wine)

[quoteIt’s a welcome addition. Don’t expect a broad fund of knowledge from staff.][/quote]
No worries on that one. So many people don’t want them in our town but I am not a bid fan of paying more money for the same wine from a mom and pop. It did force Hennepin Lake Liquors to finally switch over to accepting credit cards so that is one major benefit.

If they have Giuseppe Cortese Barbaresco Rabaja I would at least consider it. Depending on the price.

HUGE selection of predictable wines. Rarely will you find anything unique or, absent a coupon, wines you might want at competitive prices. also, wines stay on the shelves a LONG time, so be careful about condition. Last wine I bought there (outside the bottle of dry vermouth I bought today for cooking) was 2009 Togni for $69 (with coupon).

“Help” is not much.

What everyone else said. I was able to grab 2 07s and an 04 Corison Kronos from them for $60 (mis-priced).

Generous, in my experience.

For those who have been to both, how do people think Total Wine compares with BevMo? They seem pretty similar to me, with the TW I’ve been to being perhaps bigger.

This goes into the category of “learn something new every day”! I’ll have to make the trek across town to renew old acquaintances!

TW has a much bigger and better selection for everything. Pricing is about the same, slight edge for TW with coupons. Staff is equally inept at both places, but I don’t blame staff, they’re there to collect a paycheck. I honestly have not set foot in a Bevmo in years and usually only go to TW for beer and spirits. TW gets a huge allocation of Pappy and Westy. The line for those two items is quite ridiculous.

I dunno…the TW near me has a pretty good selection of stuff that Berserkers might like, if you do some searching. I’ve found Lagier Meredith, Musar, Ken Wright, Siduri, Ridge, Kermit Lynch stuff, pretty good Burg selection. Again, though, it takes some detective work. There’s no “AFWE” section.
Ditto on the coupons. Clear out some space in the cellar and horde the coupons.

As everyone else has said not a store for good wine and stay away from producers you are not familiar with as this are TW brands. When there are wines of interest they are not usually competitively priced. The only wines I buy are the Ridge Geezer and LS. For some reason these are competitive and with no shipping I actually come out ahead. The beer selection is one of the best, if not the best.

I drink almost a 6 pack a beer a year and haven’t drank anything hard for over 20yrs so I’m hoping they have more than qprs in those giant stores. Not real concerned about service and product knowledge although its fun in a cool btl store when buying something obscure. Oh well, this is sounding pretty mundain.

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Our TW sucks.
Inept salespeople, mostly crappy wines and our coupons aren’t good.
Plus they tried to cheat me on a price once.