I only use wine-searcher, so I am not very familiar with other options for finding wine. If I want to recommend a free search engine to someone trying to find an older vintage of our wines, what would you recommend?
The problem with Wine Searcher is that they have SO many bad links, to establishments that don’t actually stock OR sell the wines, just get you to order on the site, a la (allegedly) Cellar Brokers.
WS doesn’t seem to care enough to fix it, because it means they lose paying customers.
I’ve used WineZap, which seems a bit more legitimate, if perhaps less action-packed.
I have used WineZap as well. Another thing that works as well is if you are an eBOB subscriber, you can look at wine ratings and if any are available online, you can see them.
I’ve used http://www.globalwinestocks.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It’s not bad, you can enter many more search fields/options and actually returns more results than wine-searcher non-pro.
both links bring you to the same website.
Todd’s absolutely right about the number/percentage of useless links in a typical WS search but I very rarely buy from retailers I don’t know (only when there isn’t any availability at a known quantity on a wine I JUST HAVE TO HAVE) so it doesn’t bother me. It is the only source I use. WineZap was never useful to me.
Wine searcher has proven almost useless as the shops identified seem to never have the actual wines I’m looking for. Never tried WineZap.
If you subscribe to CT you can look at where a wine was purchased in the last 60days and also where other subscribers bought it over time. Its just another way to uncover a retailer for something seemingly impossible to source like small lot red Burgs. Lots, lots easier to find BDX than red Burgundy and some Barolos too.
Anyone not on Envoyer’s mailing list best missing out on one of the best retail sources bar none.
Envoyer is great if you drink burgs and champagne. And it offers a couple of PNW pinots. But they rarely/never offer recent vintage bdx or barolo, or really much in the way of Italian wine at all. Occasionally they offer aged wines in those categories. I think envoyer is great for what it offers but it doesn’t really serve all needs for me. Pity.
Craig - how do you do last 60 day search? This is cool, but can’t figure it out in CT.
I think it’s when in the page of that specific wine, on the right hand side click in ‘Stores’ in ‘Friends, Community, Stores’.
Not great use for me over here, as the CT weighting of users means it’s very US-centric.
I am always amazed that some of our local wine shops use Wine Searcher. They have the highest prices it seems of anyone. Why would you do that and always come in last place?
in terms of finding TNs on old wines, it never evolved as one might have hoped, but Ablegrape.com is still quite useful as a wine specific search engine. Ignore the fact that it looks like the new millennium never happened ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
We are 50% North America and 50% ROW.
No Eye-talian? Well that sucks, and makes it near useless for me.
Winesearcher used to be great when it first came out and for some years after, until vendors learned how to game the system to bring their results up front. Gee, kind of the same way Google used to be before they became the 200lb gorilla.
On Wine-Searcher Pro, I have all my searches default to a list in order of lowest price and US only. And further default filtering is possible if I want. I don’t find any issue with stores somehow gaming the system. I’ve been very happy with its performance. I don’t know any other service that is even close.
Of course, not every wine at a store makes it into an online system whose price is accessible to WS, but that has nothing to do with WS.