Total Wine: good, bad, indifferent?

Total Wine just entered my market, and so far I think they will be an overall positive. From browsing their inventory, TW is neither adventurous nor especially cheap. But they seem to be bringing in a great deal of wine (beyond their private labels/direct buys) that the local distributors don’t carry. The local shops seem to duplicate a lot of inventory at higher than average prices. At the very least TW will push the distributors supplying these shops to be more competitive.

If I lived in a strong wine market, TW would not be welcome in my mind. But my gut feeling is that it will drive healthy competition in an underachieving region. Since they don’t carry the esoterica I buy from boutique shops (Chinon, Bierzo, Gattinara, Cerasuolo di Vittoria, to name a few), for me TW will serve a totally different need. I know what I like in new world wines built for early consumption and there seem to plenty of options within the logical price range.

Still, a few questions remain:

  • If they distribute wine via direct purchases, shouldn’t they have better prices by cutting out one middle man? I price checked a few ‘DirectBuy’ wines and it seemed they ran about the same as the winery. Usually retailers significantly undercut the producer.

  • Are they concerned with provenance? Most of their inventory is in the $5-$15 range and doesn’t have a shelf life, regardless of handling. But they do carry some higher end wines with aging upside. I have concerns with small shops as well, but a big box is not a place I’d expect to handle wines most carefully.

IMHO they are good for liquor and pretty bad for wine

good for beer too.

Greg, where do you live?

I live in Portland OR, which is near the Washington border. Both Total Wine and Bevmo have moved into Washington because Washington recently privatized the former state-operated liquor system.
For liquor, prices seem to have gone up (because the new system imposes lots of high taxes) and selection seems to have gone down (because the private operators seem to carry only popular high-volume items). Makes me appreciate the state-controlled system in Oregon, where the state-licensed agents don’t mind carrying a decent selection of unusual (less popular) items.
For wine, I visited a Total Wine store near Seattle and they did not seem to have much in the way of higher-quality wines. Seemed to have lots of mid-priced stuff.
This is a very unscientific opinion. I plan to visit a Bevmo soon. Others who have opinions of the impact of the new Washington system, and of the impact of these big-box stores, please speak up.
Phil Jones

Good for beer and liquor.

Umm, what it ought to do is make you despise the destruction state liquor stores wrought on the private enterprise system. And the distortion of the free market Washington has imposed with its retention of control, and high taxes. Give it time, competition will drive more interesting choices. And I’m a little confused: you have some pretty good wine choices in Oregon already (I buy from a couple of them).

When they have coupons, their prices can be very competitive. I’ve bought premium Champagne at killer prices using a coupon, but otherwise, not so much.

Be sure to look at your feet in Total Wine. They will place the highest margin stuff and product they want to move at eye level. They can have competitive prices on some classic wines, but they will literally be in the bottom row at your feet.

I do not worry about provenance at Total Wine but would be interested in what others think. They do have a bunch of high-end Bordeaux etc. under special lock in my store. My assumption is that they have the size and resources to get the mechanics right. i.e. delivery and good distributors.

KF

When I was in Arizona, they had the best selection of Arizona wines I could find anywhere. ( some of those wines are really good!)

New Mexico. Coming from Santa Barbara CA a couple years ago, the wine situation is not so great. Santa Fe has some really good shops, but Albuquerque has only one place that I like to a degree.

Given the situation, TW is somewhat intriguing for new world options. There are some high quality producers, but not the single vineyard/top cuvees in most cases. That’s OK–local availability plus coupons will be good for mid-range cellar defenders.

For direct buys if they undercut the winery then the winery won’t sell to them anymore if its more exclusive wine. We see that all the time on the board, someone complains they found a certain exclusive wine cheaper on the web, the winery comes in and blasts the distributor/store and announces they’ll cut relations with them.

I think the real value of direct buy would be international wine. Not domestic.


That being said, what I think total wine is good for is bring more variety of wine to the public. People are trying different things.

The TW in my neck of the woods has enough interesting stuff to at least get a wine buff’s interest (I’ve seen Musar, Joguet, Lagier Meredith, Ken Wright, and many others). Prices at least very competitive.
My main concern is actually provenance. I have seen several bottles (and this is just with casual perusal) with obvious signs of seepage, which makes me think that they might be shipping/storing improperly, acquiring from people who do the same, not paying attention, or just not caring. For daily drinkers, not such a huge deal, but if I am looking to acquire truly fine stuff, I look a bit more proximally on the distribution chain, or to more reliable retailers.

In WA Total Wine beats almost everyone, all the time. They are welcome; our retail is so expensive I used to buy everything from Portland.

Sorry for the thread drift, but what’s the shop you like in Albuquerque? I ask because we are relocating there in the next little while. I’d looked up the options out of curiosity and didn’t see much, but did see that Total Wine was coming in there. I’ve never been to one. It sounds a LOT like the BevMo’s in San Diego where I’m from. Good for beer and liquor but like a larger supermarket selection for wine.

Is the situation in New Mexico just horrible for wine?

Santa Fe is good for wine and food. Lots of CA and NY influence. I like Casa Sena’s shop there–they sell from their restaurant wine list at retail, basically. Judging from TomHill’s posts, there are a couple of other shops there that are good as well (Susan’s and ArroyoVino, IIRC.) So New Mexico is not all bad.

Albuquerque, though, is not so hot. There are virtually no restaurants that go beyond grocery store wines at 3x markup on their lists. Even those that get a bit creative still seem stunted. And corkage is not allowed, to rub salt in the wound.

Jubilation is a pretty good shop, though they are about 50/50 on wine vs. beer and liquor. Kelly Liquors and Quarters are a step down, IMO, and I’m not sure they store the wine well.

Compared to BevMo, Total Wine is bigger and I think better. It doesn’t compare to a focused boutique wine shop, but Albuquerque doesn’t really have those anyway . . . .

TW here (NoVA) is good/great for beer and daily drinkers especially with coupons/specials; they also have a decent selection of mid-market wines. Only a few high-end wines are in temp-controlled environment, everything else is out on the floor and usually standing up so I don’t tend to buy them there.

Yup…Greg’s got it right. In SantaFe, LaCasaSena/Susan’s/ArroyoVino are all pretty good (for NM). Out in Pojoaque is Kokoman’s.
That’s pretty much it in Northern NM (I don’t shop any in ABQ).
The big bottleneck for fine/interesting wines is the distributors. Southern & National dominate the market, but they don’t have a whole
lot of interest. For example, Qupe/Verdad has some really good wines, but Southern/Bacchus-WinePatrol only brings in the basic stuff
and never anything that’s much of interest that they make. There are a number of smaller distributors who have some pretty good stuff
(Fiasco is probably the best), but there’s a lot & lot of really good stuff that they’re reluctant to bring in. I’ll get contacted several times a year
by wineries wanting to come to NM, wineries that make really good wines, and I’ll steer them to one of the smaller distributors…but the
distributors seem pretty timid about taking on new wineries.
I go up to CO 3-4 times a yr and they have lots of good/interesting stuff up there I’d love to see in NM.
Tom

I will not shop at Total Wine for a myriad of reasons:

  1. Not a fan of “super-stores” that kill local business

  2. Their prices are not really competitive on the mid-to-upper price wines

  3. Their sales staff is unskilled and annoying

  4. Their selections are pretty boring, mostly mainstream.

Welllll,

  1. Me neither,but the ones in our area have a friendly feel about them.

  2. They are for the wines I’m looking for,and over the years I have gotten some spectacular deals on Nebbiolo based wines.

  3. Not here

  4. I would think that’s the rule,generally speaking,for any large vendor,but at least here,I have found lots of interesting wines to buy at great prices…