Garnet Wines in NYC

Warren_Taranow · October 2, 2021, 5:36pm

How is this wine shop?
Thanks!

P_L_owet · October 2, 2021, 6:19pm

hey, is this the (wistful) old timers thread?

Jay_Miller · October 2, 2021, 6:34pm

In ages past when dinosaurs (like myself) roamed the earth it was one of the best shops in the city. It went downhill when ownership changed and I haven’t been in quite a while to know how it is now.

Ron_Slye · October 2, 2021, 6:45pm

Same here. In the 1980s and 1990s it was really great. I still some nice burgundies and others from that era recommended to me by Dan, who was great at giving recommendations. But he left while I was still around. Then as Jay indicated, the place has changed hands (a number of times I think). There is a thread somewhere here on WB that talks about some of these changes. My memory is the reviews of the current iteration were not that positive. But you can search and probably find the thread.

Jay_Miller · October 2, 2021, 7:06pm

It was the place you could go to always find wines like Huet, Clos Rougeard, Verset, Clos Roche Blanche, Pinon, etc. sitting on the shelves. They also had great prices on Champagne. Those were the days.

Here’s the old thread:

Dan_A · October 2, 2021, 7:13pm

This used to be a great wine shop with some great burgundy and Italian affordable gems but since it’s changed hands 5-10yrs ago it’s a pretty ordinary wine shop with unknowledgeable staff and mass marketing appeal

John_Morris · October 2, 2021, 8:22pm

The current owners do not drink and no one there knows anything. For several years, they continued to stock many of the wines the former owners did, so sometimes they still had good stuff at decent prices. But, over time, they filled up the shelves with more and more no-name stuff.

I’m told that they are obsessed with margins, so they’d rather sell a $20 wine with a 40% margin ($8 profit) than a $30 wine that they make only 33% on ($10).

It was one of the best shops in the city before Guido, the former owner, sold the place in 2015.

David_Schliecker · October 2, 2021, 8:33pm

I live two blocks away and never go for the above reasons. The old shop was great and I gave the bew ownership a chance. Much better is Millesima on 2nd Ave and 71st if you are looking for something in the area.

Warren_Taranow · October 3, 2021, 3:30am

Thanks for the follow up. I just had a less than stellar experience with an online purchase, but didn’t want to post anything negative if it was a one-off. Apparently, it wasn’t.

GregT · October 3, 2021, 7:27pm

The old store was offbeat in an only-in-NYC kind of way. They stacked bottles on top of each other using cardboard dividers. They had no air conditioning. There was a rough order to where things were placed, with CA towards the back right, France towards the back middle, and so on. It was almost like a hoarder’s place. But they knew wine and would go out of their way to find things. I remember once I was looking for an ESJ wine and the owner picked up the phone and called California to find out if there was any more, only to learn that they weren’t going to make that one again. It was really one of the most idiosyncratic shops you will ever find. Then George died and he was a big part of the place - big loud tenor who just loved wine. It was sold before I moved away and I have no idea what it’s like these days, but none of the stories have been good.

ybarselah · October 3, 2021, 8:45pm

randomly was just in the store 30 minutes ago (i’m on the UES maybe 3x/year). it’s pretty bad. there are a few good wines on the shelf but the prices are silly.

Victor_Hong · October 3, 2021, 10:09pm

The old store was offbeat in an only-in-NYC kind of way. They stacked bottles on top of each other using cardboard dividers. They had no air conditioning. There was a rough order to where things were placed, with CA towards the back right, France towards the back middle, and so on. It was almost like a hoarder’s place. But they knew wine and would go out of their way to find things. I remember once I was looking for an ESJ wine and the owner picked up the phone and called California to find out if there was any more, only to learn that they weren’t going to make that one again. It was really one of the most idiosyncratic shops you will ever find. Then George died and he was a big part of the place - big loud tenor who just loved wine. It was sold before I moved away and I have no idea what it’s like these days, but none of the stories have been good.

He was George Cohen, at Crossroads Wines instead, whose funeral I attended.

Jayson_Cohen · October 3, 2021, 10:14pm

The old store was offbeat in an only-in-NYC kind of way. They stacked bottles on top of each other using cardboard dividers. They had no air conditioning. There was a rough order to where things were placed, with CA towards the back right, France towards the back middle, and so on. It was almost like a hoarder’s place. But they knew wine and would go out of their way to find things. I remember once I was looking for an ESJ wine and the owner picked up the phone and called California to find out if there was any more, only to learn that they weren’t going to make that one again. It was really one of the most idiosyncratic shops you will ever find. Then George died and he was a big part of the place - big loud tenor who just loved wine. It was sold before I moved away and I have no idea what it’s like these days, but none of the stories have been good.

Victor is right. (I’ve never even thought that before, let alone written it.) Your are thinking of Crossroads.

Jay_Miller · October 3, 2021, 10:45pm

The old store was offbeat in an only-in-NYC kind of way. They stacked bottles on top of each other using cardboard dividers. They had no air conditioning. There was a rough order to where things were placed, with CA towards the back right, France towards the back middle, and so on. It was almost like a hoarder’s place. But they knew wine and would go out of their way to find things. I remember once I was looking for an ESJ wine and the owner picked up the phone and called California to find out if there was any more, only to learn that they weren’t going to make that one again. It was really one of the most idiosyncratic shops you will ever find. Then George died and he was a big part of the place - big loud tenor who just loved wine. It was sold before I moved away and I have no idea what it’s like these days, but none of the stories have been good.

Victor is right. (I’ve never even thought that before, let alone written it.) Your are thinking of Crossroads.

Crossroads was more of a wine restaurant. They bought great wine and cooked it for you.

John_Morris · October 3, 2021, 11:02pm

The old store was offbeat in an only-in-NYC kind of way. They stacked bottles on top of each other using cardboard dividers. They had no air conditioning. There was a rough order to where things were placed, with CA towards the back right, France towards the back middle, and so on. It was almost like a hoarder’s place. But they knew wine and would go out of their way to find things. I remember once I was looking for an ESJ wine and the owner picked up the phone and called California to find out if there was any more, only to learn that they weren’t going to make that one again. It was really one of the most idiosyncratic shops you will ever find. Then George died and he was a big part of the place - big loud tenor who just loved wine. It was sold before I moved away and I have no idea what it’s like these days, but none of the stories have been good.

Victor is right. (I’ve never even thought that before, let alone written it.) Your are thinking of Crossroads.

Greg lived in Brooklyn. Probably never got above 14th Street.

Nathan_V · October 4, 2021, 4:47pm

I stopped shopping there when David Lillie left…

T_Melloni · October 4, 2021, 7:54pm

My road to spending too much money on wine passed through Garnet when I ordered 1990 Bordeaux futures off an ad in The New York Times.
Prices, service and delivery were all quite good. Bought a bunch of Italian wines too from Garnet after that as well.

Funny reading about Crossroads on 14th. That place was fun. Lots of gems but it was pretty warm in there. Never really bought much but did get a few bottles of 2000 vintage Fonseca and Taylor Fladgate Port at a good price.

John_Morris · October 4, 2021, 8:14pm

I think there are many of us who have fond memories of Crossroads.

When I moved to NY in 1983, Crossroads was the only place that small producers from the Northern Rhone, save for a few at Burgundy Wine Co. Otherwise, it was just Guigal, Jaboulet and Chapoutier.

In the early 2000s, I came on a bottle at Crossroads with only a vintage neck strip that read 1983. The style of the strip looked very familiar. After a minute, I realized it was a Gentaz-Dervieux. (I had an empty bottle at home from years earlier.) It was marked at $5. Needless to say, I bought it. When I opened it several years later, it was a little worse for wear, but still a very pleasing wine. And almost certainly the last Gentaz I’ll ever drink.

David_Rudd · October 5, 2021, 12:43am

Everytime I went to NYC in the 80’s, I made the trip uptown. You never know what you would find. One day, they had a stack of 85 Gruaud Larose on the floor for $25. When I asked about it, the guy said ‘we just got it and we have to get it out of here. We got no place to put it.’

Sam_Kwak · October 5, 2021, 1:16am

I went through a phase around 2016-2017 when I bought a decent amount from them. They still had a few interesting wines back then. It looks like their ownership changed hands once again circa 2019-2020 and, as others have mentioned, the new owners have not really updated the inventory much other than restocking new vintages of wines they carried previously and raising price across the board. Also they’ve now done this silly thing with their online storefront where if you search for a wine, they show you all the wines you could place an order for (which they will then get from their distributor) but which have to be in units of entire cases, in addition to the wines they actually carry in the store currently, which makes absolutely zero sense and makes their website a total pain to use.

That said, if you order from the website and use apply the code “VP30” at checkout, you get an extra 10% on top of their 20% perma-discount off “listed price” on wines which can bring down the price sometimes to nationally competitive levels.