Hey all. My wife and I will be stopping over in Charlottesville, VA on our way to visit some friends in Roanoke for the New Year and I was hoping someone could provide some recommendations on some good shops to visit, particularly for bubbly. My wife and I’s tastes lean strongly to the Old World, as the majority of the wines we buy and enjoy are Northern Rhone, Beaujolais, Champagne, Jura, and Burgundy. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated. Thanks!
Matt Brown @ Wine Warehouse is your man! (You can PM him here)
Hey something I know a bit about! Berserker Matt Brown runs Wine Warehouse, which is a great store. But there are a handful of very good shops for a small town. Market Street Wine Shop is venerable and great. Tastings has a ton of stuff. Rio Hill Wine is good. The small gourmet grocer Foods of All Nations is really excellent. Feel free to PM me with any other questions. You should be fine!
If you are ever in Roanoke for the holidays again, PM me. My family is from there…won’t be there this year, however.
agree with recs above (but haven’t lived in C’ville in ~10yrs)
Thanks everyone for your replys so far; great guidance. I will likely head out to Wine Warehouse, just because its is within walking distance of my hotel. I will definitely hit up Tastings again also, I went there once before and was impressed by the selection.
Josh - Definitely. We go there every couple of years for the holidays, so I will definitely keep you in mind the next time we are going there.
Excuse the thread drift, but how is the restaurant part of Tastings? Decent food? Is there a wine list or is it basically any wine they sell in the shop available?
Scott – the restaurant part of Tastings is decent. It’s a pretty intimate setting, and the food is generally pretty good, standard fare. IIRC you can have pretty much any wine in the store with dinner, though I forget exactly what the upcharge might be (if any). The wine selection there is pretty eclectic – Tastings is a great place to wander in and spend an hour digging through the shelves, as there are lots of great producers, older wines, and just generally interesting bottles.
+1
The neat thing about Charlottesville is the diversity of small store selection for a town our size. I always tell people to check out Market Street and Tastings because they both have stores that fit their owner’s personalities, and if they fall in with those personalities they may be better served by them. Lots of importers in VA so we don’t have a lot of overlap between the stores, and the chain stores take care of the more mass maketed wines.
My travel slowed down last year, but when I was in richmond every month, I made my way up to see matt, and could not have been happier…
Obviously you failed to ferret out that Matty Brown is a chav.
Shhhhhhh!
chav not, want not