By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com Wine Enthusiast
As a wine enthusiast tho not a wine snob, I enjoy drinking wines. But I don’t have to smell the cork, swirl a small bit in a glass and take a sniff before drinking it.
This puts me in the majority of wine drinkers, which is someone who likes the taste, the experience and the moments it brings when drinking wine.
And while I have had many excellent wines in my time and really appreciate good ones, I don’t necessarily need premium products to satisfy my tastes. In fact, most of the time I drink quality budget wines, as I usually have a glass or two at home over dinner and prefer not to spend a small fortune for that small pleasure. In fact, I consider that kind of a waste of a good wine and good money for such a small occasion.
As such, I have become a king of bargain wine hunting. I don’t seek out super cheap or wines I know will be terrible, tho I do run across that on occasion, but rather good wines at very good prices. Here are my tricks of this trade, my hacks for finding wine bargains.
• Trader Joe’s Barrel Sales. This is a trick I learned from one of the wine guys at TJs. When I saw an incredibly discounted red blend displayed on a wine barrel, I asked him if it’s any good. He said it was indeed very good and added that “anytime you see wines on those barrels it means we’ve gotten in a special shipment, the winery is trying to get rid of it or some other reason. We buy it in bulk, sometimes the entire inventory, and get it at a great price.” The wine that time was Geyser Peak and it was one of the best red blends I have ever tasted. The cost was $5.99 a bottle. Unfortunately, Geyser Peak winery is now closed. And that’s the key factor here: the wines may be there that day and gone the next, never to return.
• Grocery Outlet. If you have one of these in your area, I highly recommend going in there for sreamin’ wine (and beer, too) deals. Like Trader Joe’s, it gets in shipments of outstanding wines that wineries sell to them at steep discounts (including the coveted Geyser Peak when available), which they pass along to consumers. It’s pretty common for me to pick up a nice red blend for $4.99 or even $3.99. It’s not going to win any awards but it’s plenty good to drink at home with dinner and even good enough to share with others and not look cheap. Plus, they are great wines to take to a casual dinner party in which you know the people there are are more interested in volume than high quality and will probably suck down your bottle before you finish your “hellos.” It would really suck if you had paid a premium for a bottle and didn’t even get the chance to have any of it!
• CVS Wine Section. I mentioned this to a wine-drinking friend of mine and she said “I didn’t know CVS sells wine.” Not all of them do but this drug store chain does have good wines at cheap prices. How cheap? Mondavi and a Beringer gold medal winning chardonnay and Cab for as little as $5 when you buy two. And now it’s even better for some CVS stores are going out of business and are having half off sales (spirits and beer, too, by the way). Plus, if you have a CVS card and buy six bottles, you get an extra 10% discount. I bought six bottles for $32.50! This included J. Lorh and Bogle chardonnays and a Ménage à Trois red.
• Grocery Stores, Liquor Stores & Wine Stores. I always go through the wine section at grocery stores looking for good wines on sale and have found some excellent wines at liquor and wine stores at fantastic prices – $10-15 a bottle – that are on sale and normally go for $30-50. The key is to go in there and see what they may have to offer. The problem with grocery stories is you get the same thing all the time through regular suppliers while TJs, Grocery Outlet and wine stores have different ones and part of the fun wine buying and drinking is experimenting with different ones.
• Wine & Outlet Stores (BevMo & Total Wines). As these stores are usually in crowded suburban shopping centers, I rarely go to them because I don’t do suburbia.
• Direct From The Wineries. Sometimes if I’m tasing at a winery, I run across a really good deal and will get it, or if I find something I like from a wine tasting festival a winery at it will offer discounted bottles.
In conclusion, I am alwasy on the lookout for good wine bargains but my two most common hacks are checking out any wine deals at TJ’s and Grocery Outlet.
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