I’m not nearly as concerned with storage as I am with temperature controlled transport to the store. Most stores are cool enough IMO.
Perhaps, but a liquor store in Texas where the temperatures get rather high, if they do not have temperature controlled storage for the high end burgundies they are selling, may not be worth the risk.
True dat. By the way, picked up some Henri Gouges Nuits St. George 1er at Costco Lewisville the other day. Was shocked to see it.
That one at 35 and 121? How much? That’s about 2 miles from my house.
Well, I guess no one has dealt with Centennial Wine and Spirits in Dallas.
Has anyone seen d’Angerville in TX? I haven’t down here in Spec’ston, er…Houston. Plenty of others that we don’t get either, but that one hurts.
Tyler, Austin Wine Merchant has handled d’Angerville and probably still does.
Sorry, Robert, I have no knowledge about Centennial. I do share Jim’s concern, however, about what happens before it arrives at the store. It appears you are looking at Burgs that are not current releases. Do you know the store has had the wine since release? Or perhaps baking in some distributor’s warehouse?
All of them have a few bottles. IIRC, it was right around $50 a bottle.
Tony’s Wine Warehouse? ![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
Thank God they finally went out of business. I have never encountered anything like the hard sell on no-name and over the hill wines like that anywhere before.
Yep, the one at 35 and 121. $48.99. It’s Clos de Porrets, if I remember correctly. A Gouges monopole. 2007 vintage.
can’y understand why this thread continued after Grailey’s!
Went to Austin Wine Merchant once last year and, though they had cases of great stuff literally on the floor, they wouldn’t sell me a single bottle since I was not a regular. Really pissed me off since the wine was just sitting there. . .
alan
Alan, let me make sure I’m reading your post correctly. When you say “on the floor”, you mean the wine was on display and for sale, just not for sale to you? That would not jive with my experiences there. Perhaps there was some misunderstanding as to the status of those boxes of wine. Or some staff member was having a very bad day…
Or, did you mean there were boxes of wine not for sale, but you saw them? This latter situation would be normal for many retailers (though most would keep it out of sight). AWM is a merchant that fosters relationships with customers, and certain wines are offered to those who have bought those wines in the past. I’m sure you benefit from such relationships with some/most of your historical suppliers, right?
Boxes on the floor w prices on them. Was told they were going to hold them for good customers. They had no “sold” tags on them. Wouldn’t sell to me.
alan
I have encountered the same treatment at Richard’s in Houston. I was told wines were purchased as futures…California wines, mind you. Last time I ever stepped foot in that place.
That would piss me off too. John Roenigk is a good guy. He or whoever you were dealing with would have some explaining to do, IMO.
Not much D’Angerville (or any other Diageo Burgs (Ramonet, Niellon, Roumier, Grivot, etc)) in Texas. They clear directly to the same retail accounts every year (not much on-premise placement either). We hardly got any at Centennial and we probably moved more Burgundy than anyone in TX (except maybe Spec’s). Fortunately, Diageo’s Burgundy domaines are steadily freeing the sinking ship. I’ve seen Armand with Wasserman now which is very accessible through Favorite Brands distributor. DeMontille is with Veritas last time I checked which comes in from Pioneer. Rosenthal’s burgs (Fourrier, Barthod, Lignier, Harmand-Geoffroy, Carillon) are available via Dionysus in Houston and a trickle of the Dressner, Kacher, NBI, Jeanne Marie Deschamps, Wilson Daniels, Vineyard Brands and a tiny amount of Kermit Lynch (never Coche or Ravenau) come through various distributors. Almost everything comes on pre-sales. The Texas distributors are too timid to stock even much village level stuff. Expect everything to be pretty pricy due to the extra layer of distribution required in TX.
Mascarello and G Conterno don’t exist in the state as far as I know (no Chadderdon and RWC doesn’t send Conterno here). B Giacosa used to come out as a presale once a year from Glazer’s but now that they’ve left Winebow I’m not sure of their status. A Conterno is available (Serendipity) as are plenty of good Piedmonts but not everything. Again, pre-sales rule the day, unfortunately. Your best bet is to get friendly with a good retailer (Grailey’s, Pogo’s, Chateau WM) and wait for the pre-sales to hit.
Centennial is getting out of the fine wine business. I was the wine buyer at their top store and we had a LOT of good stuff in the warehouse coolers. They liquidated almost all of it over the last few months with some ridiculous deals (40-80% off) and almost all the good wine people are gone. I’m not sure how much longer Sigel’s will last as there are lots of rumors of Spec’s or Total buying them out soon. They have always been mostly Kacher due to their exclusive relationship although they also have/had a relationship with Sorting Table and RWC. It’s not the best situation for those wines but it could be worse. We still get a lot of good stuff just not like California, New York or Chicago.
Thank you Scott. Great info.
Thanks for the info Scott! I was wondering where you went…you weren’t at the Preston store anymore when I went in on some of the big sales…