With a 12 hour stopover in San Francisco location shouldn’t be much of an issue. I would highly recommend either K&L or Wine Club. K&L recently moved to a new location and is huge and has a great selection. Wine Club is a bit more gritty and kind of like going to a used record store - lots of gems but you need to be prepared to dig a bit. Ferry Plaza wine merchant is worth avoiding in my view - the selection of retail wines is mediocre and relatively expensive. Not familiar with the other ones listed.
One word of advice - if your stopover is on a weekday do not cut things close in terms of getting back to the ship during rush hour. Traffic downtown can be brutal especially when you need to cross Market Street.
I agree with Ed. If you are planning ahead and you are really looking for something decent and well-priced, K&L is your best bet. Don’t let the others scare you about traffic though, it is basically a 15 minute Uber ride around the Embarcadero to get to K&L from your Pier.
You should also check out K&Ls auctions as they sometime have some really cool stuff there that hardly ever hits retail. If you win the auction you can set pickup for the San Francisco store and as long as it’s at least 2 days before you plan on being there, the wine will be ready to pick up, as all they have to do is move it from the Foster City warehouse, which happens on a daily basis.
Also, for food, if you like something interesting, HRD coffee shop is only a few blocks away from K&L. Usually a line there, but you might get lucky on a weekday for lunch. Not fancy, but damn good. Also, think about Ricky Bobby.Those guys are mad-geniuses when it comes to food, just check out the menu. They’re located a little further into the city, but not that far.
Although it’s further away than K&L (by about 2 miles), I would also mention Arlequin Wine Merchants. Killer selection of wine buy it may be too far from the pier for a quick trip.
Hmm, I can’t really agree with this eval. I guess pretty much on the money for WC and K&L, but I happen to quite like Ferry Plaza. Their selection is quite good, depending on your tastes. They just don’t have the “standard” grocery store wines that K&L and WC stock. Yes, FP has a narrower selection, and maybe their prices are a couple of bucks higher, but it’s well worth a stop - particularly if Andy wants a last stop before getting back to the ship, not hauling bottles around all day.
Do you know what wines you plan to purchase? Or what region/type of wine you and your friends are more interested in? Old world? New world? Champagne? Burgundy? Or do you just want to wing it? Each shop has strengths and weaknesses, also depends on when you plan to buy (i.e. K&L will hold your wine for 90 days for free). I frequent these shops quite a lot (maybe a bit too often) but it is really hard to make strong recommendation without knowing your wine preferences. Some personal observations below:
K&L
pluses: online ordering, can order wines from other stores and do will-call (best stuff in main warehouse), auctions, large selection
minuses: a bit lacking in hard to find stuff, riesling selection is not that deep, champagne selection a bit average
Wine Club:
pluses: some harder to find stuff are available, a few high-end bottles in their “special case”, good burgundy selection
minuses: website is not so good, lots of stuff missing you can find in the floor/emails, a bit disorganized in general, best stuff comes through email.
Flatiron Wines (very new, only been there twice)
pluses: huge store, lots of high end wine (Chave, Dujac, 1st growths), lots of variety
minuses: some older vintages can be pricey (current vintage prices are competitive though), no website (for SF inventory).
Ferry Plaza:
pluses: location
minuses: limited selection, prices a bit more than others.
Ferry Plaza for location, as it is around a 20-minute walk from the port. The Ferry Plaza also has wines available to drink onsite. K&L for selection; they just moved to Harrison Street, off of 5th.
We’ll be there on a Friday so won’t make the drive up to Napa, unfortunately. The boat does have a Sonoma winery excursion but pretty sure Sebastiani and Cline Cellars aren’t worth the $179 per person (it includes travel costs but not lunch). The price is absured IMO.
We haven’t decided if we’ll do dinner on the boat or in town. Depends on when exactly we need to head back and get on vs. where dinner would be and if there is enough time. But lunch somewhere around the city is a definite.
As for wine tastes. Something red, so either old school Cali cab/pinot, Burgundy, or Portuguese. And maybe a Port or two
Andy and his brother at The Wine Stop in the Burlingame Plaza Shopping Center have always been good to me. Some good deals and good service. We made it a point to see them between getting off the plane and getting to the hotel.
With the wine preference you just stated, I would do K&L for sure. Lunch in the city, lots of places, I mean a TON, you have got to tell us though what kind of food you like though, for example, Slanted Door is just at the Ferry Plaza area if you like Vietnamese food, for Italian there is Cotogna in Jackson Square or Perbacco in the financial district, etc. Dinner opens up a lot more choices but some of the more popular restaurants need months in advanced booking to get in like State Bird, Rich Table, Al’s Place, etc.
If you have a sweet tooth, I would highly recommend going to Craftsmen and Wolves in Pacific Ave. some of the best cakes I have ever had including cakes from Paris and Tokyo.
I’ve eaten at bouli bar once before and really loved it. Slanted Door sounds really cool from their website. Pretty open about food, so long as there is more than just fish on the menu, as one person isn’t a big seafood eater.
As a few others have mentioned, unless you want to be subject to the whim of what’s in stock at the various retailers, K&L auctions are a fantastic (and addicting!) way to go. They post new auctions literally every day, and there is a wide variety of choices, often at very attractive prices. If you follow those auctions for a few months before your trip and make one or two key purchases along the way, you can have the wine just waiting for you at their store in SF. Easy.
I’d do Ferry Building because (a) location, (b) while nothing near the likes of K&L the selection is almost certainly sufficient to find a couple bottles that will interest you and (c) the Ferry Building, and its immediate vicinity, are awesome. Plenty to check out, and you can satisfy your dining needs right there. I’d send you there from the cruise terminal regardless of the need to source the two bottles.
Simply for wine K&L is the best. The Wine Club is second best for sure which is being kind; you could never buy ahead online and pick up at your leisure.
It can work at WC but their online inventory doesn’t show lots of stuff that’s in the stores, and I’ve had trouble getting the wine to the right store (though it seems to default to SF). I’ve found it works best to deal directly with a person you trust in your store. When I buy something online, I contact Julia or Krissy in Santa Clara to make sure it all works. I love the store, the stuff the buyers offer, and the prices, but it’s a long way from the total convenience of K&L.
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