Jason, you are right that we specialize in small production wines. I think what makes us different from shops in the Bay Area that do the same is that we plan on having a whole bunch of them. We will open with well over 4000 different wines, the vast majority of which will be from small domaines, growers and family owned estates. Something else that sets us apart from the bigger shops is that we plan on working closely with all of the good suppliers and importers here in California to make sure that we have the best wines possible in all categories and all price points–from $7-$8 on up. Hopefully that answers your question and few others on pricing etc. Again, really looking forward to being apart of the exciting wine community here!
And Brad, you’ll have to come out to visit some time!
I can anticipate some issues.
Their shop in NYC is nice with good selection and fair prices. However, my last experience there was fairly awful due to the service. Ordered a case of wine at the store on Saturday and told them they could ship whenever weather was good to my storage service in NJ but to please post me as I liked to give the warehouse a heads up for incoming packages. The salesperson said it would likely ship on Monday and would let me know.
No word from them until Friday when I asked for whether it had shipped or not. No response and on Sunday I included a broader email list including the salesperson who sold me the wine. Finally got a response saying the weather was too warm to ship. Fine - I asked to just be posted when it would ship as I was under the impression it would be Monday unless otherwise notified. I was told it is not their policy to email clients when orders do not ship, etc. etc.
Not a huge mixup by any means but not happy with how they handled it and turned a minor issue of telling me they decided not to ship wines due to weather into a much bigger deal not ever admitting they probably should have emailed me when the wines did not in fact go out.
Hope others had a better experience w/ their service but I certainly won’t be ordering from them again. Too many stores that get it right to deal w/ ones that don’t.
So, you asked to be notified when the wine shipped, they thought it might ship on Monday, but would let you know if it does ship then, it didn’t, so they didn’t notify you and so you’re upset, even though you said to notify you when it does ship. Sounds like you’re overreacting a bit as they followed your instructions and did what they said they would as you’ve presented it here.
Brad, it was a miscommunication. They gave me the impression that unless I was otherwise notified, the wines would be shipped out on Monday - I believe the exact words were, after looking at the weather, “Monday’s not going to be an issue, we’ll get it out then”. Given that it didn’t happen, I just wanted a heads up b/c if it did get shipped out I wanted to give my warehouse a heads up.
I sent an email Friday just inquiring what happened - realize it’s a minor detail and maybe something got lost in translation - I had no issue at this point. I did have an issue when the responses were nothing but defensive, sarcastic and unhelpful - a simple “miscommunication - we didn’t ship due to weather issues and will notify you when we do” would have been fine. So whether you think I’m overreacting or not, I’m going to choose to no longer purchase wines there.