Favorite East Coast Wine Site/Shop

With the prices of shipping going up, being tired of trying to coordinate shipping with a 5-10 day travel period, and wanting to lessen my carbon footprint a bit, I am looking to shift my purchasing away from west coast purveyors (my biggest purchase volumes are with Envoyer, Benchmark, and JJBuckley currently) to places on the east coast. Curious what everyone’s favorites are that can cover a good breadth of the wine world, have decent prices, and good responsiveness.

What are everyone’s favorites? I currently have some bottles on order with Crush, but they tend to be a little more expensive for some items, and with Chambers, but once you get away from Italy their selection drops pretty dramatically. They are both great shops, but wondering who else people like and use the most!

Bassins (MacArthur Beverages) has a lot of depth and breadth. Most importantly they are a legit family owned store and all of the employees really know their regions. Really excellent and helpful people.

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Personally I try to buy from smaller companies as much as possible, but that seems to be getting harder and harder.

For east coast stores, I use pretty much all of the above mentioned. And also these Sokolin, Saratoga wine exchange, Eataly Vino, Citarella, Pluckys wines, Garys Wine, Gordons Wine, Italian Wine Merchants, City Wine Merchant, winedeals.com, wine made easy, wired for wine, winetransit, zachys.

I miss the days when I use to buy almost solely from Pop’s in Island Park, Long Island, before ownership changed.

Williston Park Wine & Spirits, my local wine shop, has a small, eclectic, well-chosen collection which is very competitively priced, especially by Long Island wine desert standards. The owner is a recovering Sommelier who, as I’ve said before, must have made a wrong turn on his way to Brooklyn. Since they’re local for me I haven’t had anything shipped from them and can’t speak to that experience, but their web site says they ship nationwide.

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definitely looks like a store from Brooklyn. Has a few Italian and Spanish wines that I buy as well. I may stop in 1 day.

Empirewine

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I like Plucky’s. Online only, so you can’t browse in person, but perfect storage.

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For in-store purchases in the Boston area, I like Gordon’s and Lower Falls Wine. (The last few months have been extremely busy here, and combined with Delta/Omicron, I have not made as many in-store purchases as usual.)

Chambers Street and Crush are both highly recommended in NYC. I’ve also had very good experiences with Saratoga further north in NY State.

I’ll second MacArthur beverage and add that for most things I’m interested in I’ve found pricing competetive too.

I think it depends a bit on if there are particular regions you are focused on. In general I think Flatiron is great for most regions. Somm Cellars is a new shop started by the sommeliers from Batard and Tribeca Grill in NY that has a great selection specializing in burgundy. And Verve has good selections as well.

I have found some real gems at https://www.mcf-rarewine.com


I don’t know why I haven’t bought more at MCF Rare Wine. It’s been excellent service and I love the unique selections they have there.

Crush and Chambers are both great. Robert Panzer is east coast based as well. And if you open it up to auctions, HDH is DE based as well now for those.

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Bassins is my favorite, but I can pick up there. (DC tax is high). I like Apex in North Carolina as well as Plucky’s. And I use Sokolin’s a lot too as well as Chambers and Tribeca Wine Merchants. NY retailers can be a bit high with taxes and shipping. And Panzer’s in DE is another favorite, I make it a day trip up 95 to pick up and I’ll stop at State Line on the way. I think Panzer has a shop now.

The manager of Bassin’s was interviewed last month, and its a decent podcast for anyone fond of that special store.

https://xchateau.com/episodes/e80-becoming-a-wine-retail-institution-w-phil-bernstein-macarthur-beverages-5HeOFQm_

Is PJs still a going concern? Circa 2005/2006 and probably beyond, they had a big, well priced selection with a real strength in Spanish wines.

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I thought you were a The Village Wine Merchant kind of guy.

Which Apex are you talking about? Apex Wine Solutions?

I think both Apex Fine Wine and Apex Wine Solutions are related. I have only bought from Solutions once but the owner seemed like a good guy.

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I absolutely am. The stores are both excellent, though different. WPWS is a little edgier in a Brooklyn sort of way, VWM is more classic. Both focus on high quality small producers. The only reason I didn’t mention VWM here is that they don’t ship. I highly recommend both stores to any and all LI locals.

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Grapes the Wine Company in White Plains has good offers, get on the email list. Do not confuse this with a similar named store in Connecticut