In my research for longterm offsite cellars, I narrowed it down to Vintage Wine Warehouse (Queens), Domaine Storage (Edison) and MWC (Clifton). Each of these services prices differently, but I estimate my ongoing storage cost with Domaine to be the least expensive. For example, I calculate my annual cost with Domaine would be $650/yr, versus VWW of ~$800 and MWC of ~$925. Reputationally, MWC is the best (per people on this board loving them). I won’t be doing much in the way of bottle pulls, so having cheaper bottle pulls or ability to move a bottle into Manhattan for free does not have much value to me (e.g. the service of MWC moving bottles to their NY retail store for pick-up). Further Domaine and MWC are in NJ which saves money on new purchases (for now). Lastly, MWC is affiliated with a retail store which should help provenance on purchases from MWC, and ditto for VWW which is owned by Morrell.
So overall, Domaine has it for the win on pricing and being in NJ. If MWC was cheaper I would go with them (they are +40% over Domaine… albeit “only” a couple hundred bucks per year to protect something more valuable). So I am thinking of pulling the trigger on Domaine. Does anyone store with Domaine/have any thoughts/experience for their dealings with them?
Shan - do a search - there are a few recent threads about NY area storage and I believe some people are now using Mana in Jersey City, just outside the Holland tunnel.
To be fair, I get a lot of value off this forum and am thankful for it. Hope to one day give back (and putting in those comparative price quotes in my OP I thought may be helpful to others). Indeed, I have previously spent a fair amount of time (a few hours) reading the old posts. I found this one particularly helpful in narrowing down my short list New York City wine storage advice - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers
This current post was to see if if folks had more up-to-date thoughts on Domaine NY/NJ specifically (most comments are a dated and focused on Chicago/STL/Washington DC), and more so given the felonies, the St. Louis licensing scare, etc.
Thank you for the recommendation of Manna. I thought I had reached out to them, and I am not so sure anymore - reaching out again; thanks for that push. Western Carriers is another one previously mentioned on old boards; they are now the Wine Vault @ Western and their prices were higher than my needs (wanted $1K annual minimum spend).
Sh@n, did you make a decision about who to go with for offsite storage? Would be curious to get your feedback. I’m trying to decide right now. Have reached out to Mana and Domaine, and will check out MWC as well. The legal stuff around Domaine does give me a little pause. But I know from reading the related threads that people on this board are using all three of these and are happy.
Per my research I think the best options are Domaine and vintage wine warehouse. MWC is up there as well but is more pricey. I went with Domaine to take advantage of aggressive purchases over nearterm prior to sales tax being collected on out of state purchases (Morrell and acker are now collecting it FYI), which even net of the below complaints on pricing still made it the best option for me.
When you get for Domaine a few things: I’ve had a couple errors in processing wines, I’m told this has been rush season so getting incoming shipments has been closer to 3 weeks than 1 week, I didn’t budget in a 8 dollar box fee for each delivery and there are a couple other fees I didn’t expect (Eg when they didn’t process wine after 2 weeks or so and I wanted a bottle, they gladly got it for me and I found out after the fact of a 30 dollar labor charge). Positives are they are responsive to emails (usually same day if not sooner), I never ever had an issue getting a delivery scheduled even when slots are full - and they have always arrived on time, the online software works well, and they make rush pulls I mentioned above. I also am able to ship wine to their various locations around the country, who then ship it on (for a fee) to other locations. Pretty cool to have HDH Send to NJ using Domaines temp controlled trucks, or I had a Texas wine store ship to Domaine DC (store only delivered to DC) and then have Domaine transfer it to NJ (I think it was 30 per case). And I have felt they are on top of all of this - professional and responsive.
I may have one wine that just went missing in a processing, but I’m not 100 percent yet so will report back when clarified.
When you are doing price comparisons, I think it’s difficult to really do. Every vendor charges differently and every customers behavior is different. Eg dollar per locker or per bottle. Different ways of treating 375s or 3L. Insurance fees vary drastically and I found to be material differences.
I think Domaine is cheapest for parking wines for the long term, as their monthly fees are the lowest when adjusted for their lower insurance charges. If you are flexing up and down like me, or doing lots of pulls etc., then you need to budget slightly conservatively in my experience (Domaine charges by locker size and by bottle, which means I will have a one time consolidation fee once my deliveries slow down to optimize my locker space), box fees etc. However if you are doing lots of flex up or down, May not be ideal as you have annual contracts for fixed capacity and not per bottle and there are these other fees. I’m going to get tagged with repacking fee to consolidate the various incoming boxes they received over the past few months.
Overall it’s been more expensive than I expected, but from a service standpoint haven’t had material complaints (although I feel like I need to stay on top of cellar tracker reconciliations to make sure stuff is not misprocessed), and for special requests they really do accommodate.
Here is another example of how things are more expensive than you budget for. Apparently, every time a bottle comes in via in via Fedex/UPS (i.e. a lesser box), you pay for an $8 box charge to move them into a more proper storage box. So wine goes into that box and into your storage. Well, that new box may only have 4 bottles in it, e.g. it does not get consolidated into your wine boxes in storage. So your processing fee for those 4 bottles has (i) incoming box processing fee, (ii) individual bottle fee, and (iii) box charge. Since you use this box space fairly inefficiently, you will end up with more boxes than your wine actually requires. So you will then eventually pay for the box consolidation fee, e.g., paying for labor time to consolidate your wines into a proper amount of boxes. And then presumably you will rinse/repeat as you do pulls and take deliveries, and get a $8 box fee if you just pull a couple bottles.
Now I am not complaining. The boxes you get shipments in probably have styro packers etc. and are oversize, so you want to get new boxes. Ideally they would go into the existing boxes to optimize your space, but I imagine that takes them time to do etc. vs. just swap the boxes and put into your locker.
It just results in more in charges than I expected. Offsite is not cheap. You pay for the service of having someone take your deliveries, identify them, store them, find them when you want, and deliver them in a refrigerated truck to your doorstep with only a few days notice. I am definitely more thoughtful on taking pulls from offsite (e.g., shipping more to my apartment vs. offsite, which is doable in fall/winter/spring and trying to maximize the # of pulls at one time). Not sure how one can optimize the incoming wine processing fees except buy less wine. The idea of shipping 2 bottles to offsite and then pulling those 2 bottles is not economic unless you are doing really high end stuff where another $12-15/bottle charge doesn’t really matter. The economics do excel I imagine if you are laying up OWC cases for a couple years.
One thing I just thought of is to save more of my boxes that come from pulls. Can use those same boxes for pickups from the apt, which is not terribly often, but I imagine could happen a couple times a year. Also more environmentally efficient, although we do recycle.
Someone has emailed me to inquire if there is a better option for me, given my bottle/box ratio right now is bit out of control (ideal would be 12x and I am 4x). I doubt they saw this post above, so genuine response on their part. I doubt these fees are going away, but any improvement would be good, as I am waiting on many more shipments still to come…
Yeah I’ve pondered a more full service storage option; mine will receive packages for $4 (per week that they’re there) but the staff has no access to our lockers. I think I kinda like it this way, though.
Some of the folks at Domaine NYC do read this board. I have stored there for many years and always found them to be helpful, responsive, and understanding. Their fees are what they are, but they have worked with me to come up with the best solutions within the system and have never been anything but a pleasure to deal with, even though I now maintain only a small locker.
I’ve been waiting…and waiting…and waiting for my wines from My Wine Deals to be sent from Domaine NYC to the DC location for pickup. Last I heard was it’s supposed to be this month.
I live about a 10min drive from Vintage Wine Warehouse so it’s kind of a no-brainer for me. My uncle stores with Domaine, and has had his wine there since they were still Acker.
Are you talking about VWW? I have not heard that. I will ask Eric and Ronnie. It’s possible they just cut out Saturday hours for the busy retail season.