Honest question, this isn’t a pissing match…are the offsite storage facilities that I see these $300+ bottles actually temperature controlled warehouses? PA doesn’t talk about their storage facilities anywhere and often the reason these bottles end up on steep discount is they literally are “on the shelf” for years. I don’t doubt they arrived to PA in good standing, but then what? I’m glad you’ve had good experiences with those bottles, that’s a nice data point.
Regarding my local stores in and around Philly, they absolutely have bottles of Tignanello, etc sitting upright on a shelf for months and months on end, near windows in a few of them.
Anyways, I’m not sure how this one devolved so quickly, but I am genuinely curious if you have insight into the PA storage facilities that ship direct to customers in the state since it seems like you might. I will add, I have seen a few suburban stores that have a “premium” temperature controlled room in the back. Those are few and far between but they do exist and I’m assuming that may be what you are referring to.
First growths are only distributed to premium collection stores that have either wine refrigerators or dedicated wine rooms. There are also additional bottles stored in central warehouses as well which are temperature controlled. I do have insight into their storage and distribution as I know a variety of their senior buyers and operational people.
Certainly there are some wines that will be stored at room temperature at various stores, just like they will be at other retailers like K&L etc. it’s probably not a major concern if they’re of the current vintage. Certainly the stores aren’t particularly hot.
My problem with FWGS clearance sales and their website in my limited experience is the online inventory is often inaccurate. It did work in my favor once where I found an interesting bottle on clearance that wasn’t supposed to be there, though.
I asked my dad, who lives in PA, to look for 4-5 items that were on clearance and listed online as in-stock at the store nearest to him as of this morning. He went at noon and only one was available; the other four were sold out days ago, according to the employee he spoke with.
Yeah…this is, for me, an example of the website “being broken.”
Also, try adding those items to your cart for pickup and checking out. They’ll disappear the moment you go to enter payment info. So they know they’re out of stock? But they show as in stock on the search pages?
Also searching with filters, the filters often get ignored once you load more than the first page of results.
And searching for “in stock” items pulls up tons of “limited availability” items which are by definition, not in stock.
It’s a total mess if you want anything that might ever even reach levels of moderate demand. I’ve reported all these bugs to them months (years?) ago and either their backend is such a mess they can’t fix them, or they can’t be bothered to.
PLCB/FWGS is probably the 3rd largest wine retailer in the US behind Costco and Total Wine. They should definitely be able to do better than this.
Like I said, I’ve had good experiences (the current ‘chairman’ who makes the selection has a good palate for spanish reds) but also some bad.
If you want to buy any sort of allocated whisky it’s
a crapshoot. I haven’t had any issues buying anything else including extremely well priced bdx (2016 mouton for $300, etc)
Agree…also, who defends state run liquor stores? That’s like saying Kevin Patullo is doing a great job at offensive coordinator. I mean, I wouldn’t egg his house, but I wouldn’t go out there defending the guy either. Probably one of the guys who gets the Pappy direct from the back door instead of going through the lottery.
Late to the party, but went for 2 bottles of the malbec, and replacing the bottle of Lord I drank the other night (excellent), and also that Carignane you suggested. Looking out for that “milkshake wine” hat next.
It was a solid offer. I pretty much don’t buy wine at all anymore for a couple of big reasons, but I couldn’t resist a 6-pack. (FYI, it was only a handful of wines available and the Black Label was 10% off, not 25% off.)
The fact that you have to go out of your way to find deals, if there are any, is what drives me mad…and I know I’m not the only one that has problem with their layout.
