WBW#18 — My Favorite Wine Store(s)

As the jingle goes, “you can never have just one potato chip.” Me, I can’t have just one favorite wine store. So, for Wine Blogging Wednesday #18 I have two. If you don’t already know, WBW sets aside one day a month where wine bloggers post about the same topic. This month, Dr. Vino chose the topic. Here’s my contribution:

Purple Smile Wines located in the historic but trendy Fairhaven district of Bellingham is a wonderful little wine shop. The owner, Jeff Wicklund, is down-to-earth and very friendly. You feel right at home the minute you walk in. Although the shop is small, it carries a wide variety of wines from all corners of the globe with a special emphasis on Northwest wines. It also has some stemware and other wine accessories. The wine selection is interesting and runs the gamut of price ranges. But what makes this place so special, despite the homey, corner-store, atmosphere, is the wine tastings offered every Saturday from 1pm to 5pm. Each week is a different theme—local Northwest wineries or importers and/or distributors from around the world. I went to the Spanish wine tasting a couple of weeks ago that showcased the portfolio of wines from Jorge Ordonez and went home with a bottle of Naiades 2003 made of 100% Verdejo grapes. It was so awesome; I sprung for the $25. There is a great selection of wine here in this area but Purple Smile Wines is the first place to actually offer tastings. It’s much easier to make a selection when you can actually taste the wine.

Just a couple hours south by plane in the heart of Sonoma County is a place I consider to be wine buying Mecca. Bottle Barn located in Santa Rosa, California, is an incredible place to shop. It’s basically a warehouse filled with wine (and other spirits). Here, too, the wines span the globe but there is a predominance of wines from California. You can often find small winery bottlings here. The selection is just enormous. And they offer wines that range from moderately available to extremely limited and they even carry some that are nearly non-existent. But what gives Bottle Barn the edge is that they offer their wines at low (and I mean VERY low) prices. (It actually cost me less to buy the wine there and pay for the shipping than it would have cost me to buy the wines locally—if I could even get some of the wines locally.) Plus their staff is incredibly knowledgeable and eager to help. The last time I visited, it was the day before Thanksgiving and the place was packed, but the friendly staff took their time and helped me navigate my way through their French section where they pointed out an absolutely superb Chablis and Sauternes at a great value. If you plan to visit save your shekels. This is the kind of place where you will want to go home with at least one case. And, they ship right there from the store. I received my shipment a couple of days after we returned home and everything arrived in pristine condition. The only drawback to Bottle Barn is that they don’t list the wines they carry. The staff jokes that even they don’t know everything they have. So, shopping online can be difficult. But if you know what you want, you can order via email