Most incongruous wine find (DRC RC in a supermarket)

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Hawaii supermarket in San Gabriel has an entire display case of DRC including at least 5-10 vintages of RC. It seems to be stored reasonably well and all the bottles are plastic wrapped. No prices, but from the pricing of other wines with pricing I doubt there will be deals.

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Considering how janky the spot is, I find their wine/whisky selection to be sketchy as hell.

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there is an Asian supermarket near Din Tai Fung in Arcadia that has a similar high price selection in a large glass cold cellar. In Santa Anita Mall. I’ve found a couple bottles but most are overpriced. Sounds similar.

It is very odd.

Wing hop fun or something? That is at least upscale. This place is… not.

The person in front of me was using EBT and the person after me was buying Louis XIII. Weird.

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Know that Asian supermarket well. It’s such a dichotomy, that place.

We were in a restaurant in Tuscany. It was one of those places where all the wines are displayed around the dining room . I look up from the table and there is a bottle of 1966 Romanee Conti 1966. Level was 4-5 cm, color ok. Priced at around $350. Long discussion with she who must be obeyed, as it was a lot of money for us at the time. Restaurant reduced the price to around $300 if I agreed to take the wine as is.

Of course, it was over the hill. The owner sportingly comped dinner and included a bottle of wine. Great meal, and now a fun memory.

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Rudy wines?

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in my local Stater brothers supermarket there is a locked cabinet. A few months ago I looked in it and there was 2 bottles each of 95 Comtes, 98 Comtes and 02 Dom. I asked manager and he said it was sitting in the back warehouse for years. Our climate is very mild and rarely reaches 80. It never could’ve been much above low 70s ever in there at most. They were about $125 each. I took em all. Have had 4 of em so far. They have all been great. Score!

Another market had a bunch of 05 Martha’s in their locked temp controlled cellar. They do occasional sales when you buy bottles and I was able to get 6 of them for $140 with tax. They’ve been perfect so far

15-16s so likely not

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I’ve stayed in the area quite a number of times, and I’ve looked into the case of wine and whisky often. My suspicions first arose when I looked at a few bottles of Pappy Van Winkle with completely different color labels. Either the provenance was suspect in that at least one bottle was sun-drenched, or the bottles were a classic example of what I would assume to be counterfeit (or refills).

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The little market, more like a convenience store, in the small town of Bowmore on the island of Islay had 1995 Musar in its little wine section. The huge selection of great whisky was not a surprise, but that certainly was!

Most likely the serial number on the bottles : will be black-out.

Most likely they will pricey…

There was a somewhat grungy little market on Laguna near California in San Francisco that had a wide array of Cal cabs from the 70s in the early 2000s, and at very modest prices. They were on a cheap metal rack next to things like potato chips. I assumed they were probably well cooked by then, but I’m sorry I never took the chance on one.

A couple of decades back, a chain pharmacy on the north shore of Oahu had a magnum of 1976 Salon on the shelf for $199.99. I took it to the register. The clerk said “that can’t be right!”. So she rang it up for $19.99.

Dan Kravitz

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I grew up in Peoria IL and a few years ago was back in town for a funeral.

Out of nostalgia I popped into the Super Liquors where I’d often tag along with my grandfather so I could get a bag of their complementary popcorn. To my surprise they’d added a “fine” wine addition to the store in the decades since I’d last visited. Of course I had to give it a quick browse.

There were a number of older mediocre bottles, but I ended up spotting a 1997 Hugel Gewurtz SGN. Being a big fan of Alsatian wines and figuring if anything could sustain the poor storage this would be it, I grabbed it and presented it at the counter. As there was no price sticker, the clerk looked it up in the computer. Somewhat similarly to Dan’s experience, he then said the price was $14.99, if that was okay with me. I agreed and purchased it.

Sadly, the wine was cooked but the story was worth the $15.

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Went to San Diego 3 months ago. Hotel was in bay area with 4-5 otherhotesl within a block or two. There a convenince/touristy shop ( health and beauty aides, snacks and food/ souvenirs and trinkets as well as alcohol and tobacco products. On first viist manager type questions my studying of the wine section (had mostly older vintages of some nice labels) versus the daily drinker plonk). Turned out he was owner and was a winecollector and put a lot of his collection into his retails shops. Scored a 92 and 94 dominus for my trip (2 of each) for under 500 total! On the counter were bongs,vape pens and bubbble gum as I was buying my 30 year old wines.

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They were not blacked out. If you look at the picture you can see them.

Once and only once my local Sam’s Club had a display table with a stack of a dozen or two Krug Grand Cuvee in their red boxes. $50 each. This was a number of years ago, before the numbered editions, and when $50 for a bottle of bubbles (not one of my primary cellar categories) was a splurge - but recently enough that $50 was still quite the deal. I took 3. I should’ve cleaned 'em out but that would have been a difficult conversation when the credit card bill came.

one Costco had a pallet of 96 DP for $79 in the early 2000s when 2000 was the current release. I bought most of it.