Category: best wine websites

The Dirt on Limestone

Kermit Lynch, based in Berkeley,  is still tops among wine merchants. That’s my conclusion after following 3 dozen wine merchants with an online presence over the last 18 months.

The September offerings at www.kermitlynch.com feature a brilliantly selected case of wine. From Champagne to Cassis, the wines share one thing, all were grown on limestone, that mystical chalky stuff the French call “calcaire.”

Anthony Lynch provides background theories about limestone soils. Then he suggests we taste these and  draw our own conclusions about the influence of limestone-rich soil on wine.

Creative selection, refreshing soft sell, intelligent, commentary, and no point scores: Kermit Lynch is highlighted on www.bestonlinewineshopping.com for these and other good reasons.

A Real Happening App

How is it that two guys from Denmark created the world’s most popular wine App, Vivino, now headquarted in San Francisco?

 

 

Vivino.com,  now the most popular wine App, began simply as a resource tool and has evolved quickly into an all-purpose site.  

It caught my attention about 3 years ago as a clever, useful App that allows you to take a photo of a wine label and get instant feedback and reviews of that wine.

The App is free to download on the apple store, google play, and windows phone. Other sites now have a similar app but these guys started it.

Headed by a couple of techies from Denmark, Vivino is the brainchild of Heini Zachariassen who was joined by co-founder Theis Søndergaard in 2010. The Founding Fathers, as they call themselves, simply saw a need for making information readily available to wine consumers.

Et Voila Vivino! Or whatever they say in Copenhagen.

Vivino now employ 80 people and even have an office in San Francisco to help it deal with its over 18 million subscribers. Yes, 18 million!

As it fine-tunes its own direct wine sales department, Vivino offers wines no other site has. Many are from California, and it is now featuring the 2013 T-Vine Grenache, 2012 Elizabeth Spencer “GPS,” 2012 Seltzer Stags Leap Cabernet,  2012 Lateral Napa Red, and Marietta Cellars Arme.

Vivino is also the only website offering wines from the cult-like Alpha Omega and other hard-to-find wines such as Sbragia  Home Ranch Chardonnay.

Imports, when offered, are equally fascinating, such as a Pomerol, the 2010 Gombaude-Guillot, and the 2013 Ornellaia Serre Nuove.

You also know how many bottles remain for each wine offered and how much time is left before the deal is removed.

New wines are added daily.

As A Search Engine

In the early days,  it occasionally failed to deliver reviews of older vintages or under the radar wines.  But recently, it had reviews of every Cabernet, Pinot or French wine I could think of because it now elicits reviews from its members as well as published reviews from experts.

These reviews from members follow the Tripadvisor 5-star format, and some reviewers are then followed by other reviewers on Facebook.  Several subscribers, mainly sommeliers, have reviewed over 1,000 wines.

According to the Founders, its “users contribute ratings for millions of wines from around the globe, and collectively, this database makes up the largest wine library in the world.”

To make your decision-making easier in this social media world, Vivino now lists the top wines rated by subscribers in specific states. So you can see the top 25 wines from $20 to $40  from Texas or Mass. Washington State, or whatever state you live in.

But the list of lists continues with 11 Malbecs, 10 New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs or 2 California Syrahs. Or maybe that was two turtle doves.

Well, the point is these people like compiling lists.

Admittedly, I was intrigued by the top ten wines sold at Safeway and Whole Foods. Seriously, do people buy Opus One and Dom at a Safeway?  There’s also a top 100 wines list.

As an Online Merchant

Recently, Vivino ratcheted up its own list of wines for sale using a third party retailer for fulfillment.  This exciting development is spearheaded by Peter Ekman who judging from the selections, knows where to find excellent wines at good discounts. Shipping is normally free for 4 or 6 bottles and the discounts range from 25% to 60%.

These wines are offered through a local retailer, Vintage Berkeley which ships out of San Leandro.

Wines for 4th of July Parties

With a week to go before the 4th of July holiday, the web wine retailers are already competing to light up the skies with special deals, massive discounts, blowout sales to end all blowouts, and free shipping incentives. You can be sure the wines chosen for your July 4th celebrations will be made by rockstar winemakers, from the greatest vintage since 1945, and have earned numerous 90+ point ratings.
Yes, there is a lot of hot air. For over a year I’ve been following two dozen leading web wine retailers, and if nothing else, I’ve learned how to cut through the hype, and silly descriptors, the aggressive sales pitches, and those numerical ratings to find the websites that have genuine deals and deliver on time.
If flash sales appeal to your independent side, my favorite is www.lastbottlewines. com which is headquartered in Napa.  Usually, offering only one wine daily, these guys have an unpredictable nature and they love holiday surprises. The discounts are usually deep, as in half-off, but to purchase wines, you have to act quickly. I recently missed out on a super Zinfandel from Lake County offered at $10 a bottle.  This is the go-to super source for Napa and Sonoma wines, especially Cabernet. Shipping is free for 4 bottles or more.
Another excellent website is www.cinderellawine.com which offers two daily deals and gives you a little more time to think things over. Though any connection between Cinderella and wine escapes me, this site has come on strong in recent months. Its best deals are wines from Italy, Spain and Australia. If you prefer Italian, this is the site for you. However, in mid-June it began offering unusual 2 and 3 bottle packages, but unlike others who offered “curated” wines, this site offers creative packages. As an example, a 2012 Chardonnay duo consisted of the Auntsfield Chard from New Zealand and a Franciscan Cuvee Sauvage Chard from Napa’s Carneros ($36.99 the pair). That’s an intriguing side by side comparison. Additionally, once a week its parent company, winelibrary.com, offers subscriber a special deal. These usually fall in the under $20 price point and are often good to excellent deals. Continue reading “Wines for 4th of July Parties”

Amazon’s Wine Dept

Chances are good if you own a smartphone, have a credit card, and are over the age of thirteen, you are familiar with Amazon. And if you are among those who once enjoyed hanging out at bookstores, you may still be a bit resentful, but for most people, Amazon is the Mother of all online sellers.

So you will not be shocked to hear that Amazon has a large wine department. Not the biggest, but close enough as the most recent listing of available wines exceeds 9,000.  Amazon is a little different from other online wine sellers and Amazon loves to assemble wine packs of 2, 4, or 6 bottles. And toss in a few 12 bottle packs as well. So that 9,000 wine items listed includes these packs.

To digress, it is fascinating to hear Amazon label this category “wine packs” whereas the other sites prefer to label a selection of two or more wines as something curated. And the curation, if that’s a word, is almost always performed by experts curators.  

But Amazon is not without shame as many wine packs are grouped by producer, by region or by theme, as in wines to give to pacify the “Mad Housewife” or some other equally silly theme. Then there are wines sporting  the “Fifty Shades of Grey” theme. That’s pushing it.

That said, now let’s get back to the details. About two-thirds of the wines on Amazon are US in origin, mostly California, but Washington State (1,500) is well-represented as in New York (550). These last two states have earned the recognition, so bravo Amazon.  French wines offered hover around 1,000, and Italy shows up with 485 offerings.

Maybe my expectations were too high, but after the first few hours of checking it out, I felt like I was browsing the wine section at Rite­Aid with so many Barefoot wines and others found in most supermarkets and drugstores with a wine dept.

Amazon invites advertising, and it would appear that many of those wine packs feature wines from their advertisers. No problem with that; it is good business to punch up its featured brands and partners.

When you begin hunting for deals and discounts, Amazon surprisingly is not exactly a savvy wine shopper’s paradise.  In fact, as is often pointed out in their customer’s reviews, quite a few of the wines can be bought at better prices at grocery stores like Safeway and at Costco and similar stores. Cupcake, Layer Cake, Pacific Rim, Smoking Loon, Pepperwood Grove and Barefoot….and many other brands owned by Gallo may be cheaper at Rite-Aid, Safeway and CVS. (Note to Amazon brass: you often get as many negative reviews from your wine customers as 4 stars.)

When it comes to basic discounts, again Amazon pushes its mixed packs, offering 20% off on most of them. All told, there are about 165 “Deals,” many of them packed. But I could not find much to get excited about under that category. Not totally discouraged, I then clicked on  the category of “1 cent shipping,” Eureka! The mother lode. The Mother’s mother lode. If you have some leisure time, you can browse through about a 161 pages with about 4,000 listings.

Better yet, save yourself the time: there’s not much there of interest save for a few French wines.

Best Tip: go to the 20% off list and look for those items that are also part of the 1 cent shipping for the best deals on Amazon.

For more of our review of Amazon, go to: http://www.bestonlinewineshopping.com/amazon