Besides a winery, what are your favorite wine merchants in Napa or Sonoma?
Napa Valley Wine and Cigar!
That’s honestly probably the best in Napa. Whole Foods doesn’t have a great selection and their prices are a bit high. Dean and Deluca can have some cool local stuff but I haven’t been in a couple of years.
In Sonoma County, Bottle Barn in Santa Rosa is good. It’s a warehouse setting with little to no interaction with sales staff. Big selection at great prices.
Two pretty important shops in the village of Napa; Backroom Wines and Napa Valley Wine & Cigar -
The owners are usually there to help, and both should be must-stops if you are venturing into the valley. These are the places you will find out about the next cutting edge wines in the Napa Valley.
Yup…BottleBarn in SantaRosa.
NapaVlly W&C is definitely good w/ very good folks there. Dean&Deluca is pretty good…a bit pricey.
My personal fave is MX’s Enoteca up in Calistoga. She always have some very interesting stuff that you can’t find
anyplace else, from value wines to very high end/cult stuff. One of the few places you can find SQN on the shelf…if
you don’t mind paying thru the nose (too expensive for my blood).
Full disclosure: Margaux is a long-time friend from her SantaFe days.
Tom
+3 on Bottle Barn. Only place I shop for wine locally. +3 on NVW&C as well. Great people nice stash in back.
In St Helena you should not miss ACME Fine Wines on Fulton Lane. Lots of new interesting labels aling with some great old time favorites.
Forget about Backroom, but they do have some pretty good stuff. Haven’t been to ACME but their online inventory seems pretty legit.
There are also several online retailers you could pick up from, BPWine (St Helena), Benchmark (Southern Napa) and Rare Wine Co (Sonoma), but no shelf browsing.
Thanks everyone. Anything to recommend in Healdsburg?
+4 on Bottle Barn.
No, just drive to Santa Rosa and browse Bottle Barn.
For a small but well curated selection focused on imports, you might want to stop by Bergamot Alley, a wine bar but also wine shop.
And +6 on Bottle Barn.
Yes to Napa Valley Wine and Cigar, of course. Backroom is also very good. Those are the Napa best choices.
St. Helena has Acme and 750 Wines. If you are short on time and need to buy a sandwich at the same time, Sunshine Foods (our local market) has an incredibly good selection. Dean & DeLuca has a good selection of CA stuff…pricey, and no imports. Up here in Calistoga there is Enoteca. Very small, but hand selected wines.
Bottle barn is dangerous. I spent way too much time and money in there my last trip. So many wines I had never tried, all sitting there begging me to take them home.
For wine “bargains”, look no further than The Wine Garage, 713 Washington St. Suite B, Calistoga, Ca 94515. (Disclaimer: I do not work for them, have no financial interest, etc.)
Had a nice experience at the Wine Emporium on Main St. in Sebastopol.
David and Monica at 750 wines in St. Helena are in a class to themselves as the premier purveyors of the regional wines that matter.
+87 for Bottle Barn. lol
It’s the only place I shop for wine besides tasting rooms
The general selling point in Napa is “we can source the already famous and hard to find for you.” The exception, in my experience, is Back Room Wines which will buy anything Dan likes, regardless of whether someone else has already made a market for it. You’re more apt to find up and comers before the rest of the world discovers it there.
++ on Napa Valley Wine & Cigar and Bottle Barn. Great people!!
Thanks,
Ed