Have you noticed in your area that wine shops are not doing the sales of a year ago? In Minneapolis, other than WineStreets in North Oaks, no one has offered much in terms of a good wine sale. Maybe liquor stores are doing so well in the lockdown that they don’t need to offer great sales however who is buying wines over $50.00 in your local market if they are not priced to move?
Not talking about the national players on this thread.
Interested to see if other cities across US are seeing the same trend in Minneapolis.
The wine steward at my local supermarket told me that business is so good that she wasn’t going to run any sales at all. It’s a supermarket with a pretty decent fine wine selection, since the regional chain (140 store) CEO and his wife shop there themselves (they are our neighbors).
Now its not Redwood City Costco or anything magical like that, so I’m not sure what the read through might be for other categories, but its been slim pickings there all year.
I’ve been noticing the same thing. I’ve also noticed that our local shops have also been buying less widely and deeply though, and may just be focusing on selling what they have at the best margins.
And add in tariffs and that imports of many fine European wines are down, and there’s a lot less incentive to mark down what’s already here at pre-tariff pricing.
I have been limiting in person shopping at my LWS for the most part due to COVID and have been buying more online, but my local store has been advertising some sales. I did visit my LWS to pick up a six pack of 2015 Sandrone Aleste Barolo for 72 per, which I thought was a good deal. There also seem to be some decent sparkler and Thanksgiving deals. However, they used to have some storewide sales, but I don’t think have had one for a while.
John - On The Rocks in Hugo seems to pretty regularly have a 20%-off sale, and this is on top of any markdowns they have on specific wines… not a ton of higher end wines, but some… on one of their last sales, I bought a half case of 2015 Opus One at $180 per.
Brad’s hey days were prior to Jack Goldenberg selling Quality Wine and Spirits to Southern. Quality was a smaller operation that was able to work on the fringes to obtain a bunch of small volume closeouts that Brad spun off. One of the passionate music aficionado’s in the Asylum forum here spent years working w Brad and Brian.
Brad’s hey days were prior to Jack Goldenberg selling Quality Wine and Spirits to Southern. Quality was a smaller operation that was able to work on the fringes to obtain a bunch of small volume closeouts that Brad spun off. One of the passionate music aficionado’s in the Asylum forum here spent years working w Brad and Brian.
A lot of those wines also ended up in the closeout bins at Sid’s/Big Top.