You may or may not already know this, but I’ve taken up temporary residence a little further south of Vancouver in San Francisco. Yes, despite the fact that on more than one occasion I’ve drunkenly proclaimed “East Van til I die!” I’ve left the fair city of Vancouver. Kurtis and I will both still be contributing to Cherries and Clay, perhaps with an even wider array of topics, wines, views, etc. My goal is to continue to post content that is applicable and interesting to people in BC.

Yesterday, I explored wine retailers around the very hilly neighbourhood I’ll be residing in called Nob Hill. Our local Whole Foods has a more interesting selection than some of the small beer and wine shops I’ve seen in Vancouver; La Gitana Manzanilla, Domaine Huet Vouvray, Talenti ‘04 Brunello di Montalcino, Landmark Overlook Chardonnay, Schug Caneros Pinot Noir, and enough Beaujolais, Grüner, Rias Baixas, and Vinho Verde to keep me busy. As expected, many of the wines, especially Californian, are available at half the price that we’d pay back home. I was quite surprised to see a number of wines equally priced in the BC market, ie Huet Vouvray for $29.99 instead of $36 or so, Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio for $22 instead of $20, Vieux Télégraphe Châteauneuf-du-Pape for $65 instead of $75. I’m starting to appreciate Marquis Wine Cellars’ pricing more and more…

A hike a couple blocks away, is a place called Spencer & Daniel’s Wine Outlet. This magical place buys closeouts, liquidations and overstock and sells it at discount prices. I probably wouldn’t buy most of the wine on their shelves, but that didn’t stop me from scouring the isles with my mouth open. Golden Kaan ‘05 Chardonnay for $1.99?! How can you even do that?? This puts a whole new take on “Cheap As Clay.” Lots of the lower-end Californian wines that we see ranging from $14-$20 for $5-9 kind of thing. I did find a Delas ‘03 Crozes-Hermitage Blanc “Les Launes” that looked interesting for $8.99, so I picked one of those up. I already have a bit of a wine buying problem, and places like this surely wont help.

Finally, I stumbled on a place called BevMo! Again, a huge range of prices from what I’d consider to be dirt cheap to numbers that I’m used to paying in BC (ie. a lot of the wines from Chile/Argentina - all the Cono Sur wines are at par). BevMo!’s strong point is their selection of wines on sale where you buy one bottle and the second one is only 5 cents - see the list here. That seems awfully reasonable to me.

Last night we had a chance to meet up with Cory (of Saignée) and his wife to share some wine at a place called Cin-Cin in Los Gatos on the edge of San Jose. The snapshot of San Jose I’ve seen so far is largely not my scene (think a gigantic Yaletown but with a little bit more Las Vegas flare…), but Cin-Cin had a good wine list with some great value and as Cory put it - it’s the only place to get a halfway decent bottle of wine around here. We drank the Chateau des Tours ‘04 Côtes-du-Rhône Grenache Blanc and the Domaine Chandon de Briailles ‘05 Pernand Vergelesses “Les Vergelesses” and both were great. The Chateau des Tours was rich and minerally with a touch of minty herbaceousness and only $24. Sadly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a deal like that back home.

I’ve barely begun to start visiting my list of restaurants, wine bars, and wine shops that I’ve been dying to see in the Bay Area, and I imagine it’ll be a long time before I get through it!

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 Responses: