My image of a wine purveyor is low tech: a traditional shop with a highly knowledgeable salesperson. Buying online is a totally different experience but definitely has its place.

Wine Stores: Buying Wine, Then and Now

My image of a wine merchant is low tech. In my mind’s eye, there is something old fashioned and old world about a wine purveyor. I see a person who is courtly and polite, who works surrounded by bottles assembled from the ends of the earth, in a slightly dark and crowded environment, who is deeply knowledgeable, and who magically knows the location of each of hundreds or thousands of bottles and can speak authoritatively about their contents.

When I started buying wine, just out of graduate school in the 1960s, I dealt with just such a person: Hyman Gelfand, at Sherry-Lehman, on Madison Avenue in New York. Though my wine budget was modest in the extreme, Hy always had some recommendations. And I always had some decent wine to drink. Over the years I continued to deal with him, and as my budget expanded beyond student level, and I would call by phone from East Hampton rather than stopping by the store, the nature of the relationship and the nature of the advice remained the same.

While Mr. Gelfand is no longer with us, I still buy quite a bit from Sherry-Lehman. I now mostly go online and click my mouse. Not very glamorous, but once we set our romantic visions aside, it is a convenient way to shop. Online wine buying seems to be an important and growing part of the industry.

My online buying falls into two categories. For stores like Sherry-Lehman or Morrell, I use the website the way I would their catalogs, with at least a vision of the store in my mind, and the feeling that I can always pick up the phone and ask a few questions. In the second category are the virtual stores, no bricks and mortar, no shelves and aromas. Just a legal way to sell under New York State’s complicated licensing laws. In truth I can call the customer representatives at the virtual merchants and ask questions also, but I tend not to. There is also the question of quantity. I enjoy going into a wine store, especially here on the East End, and chatting a bit and trying a bottle or two of something I’m not familiar with, always with the intention of returning for more if I like it. With shipping costs online, it does not make sense to buy that way. A case, or at least half a case, is more economical.

As an experiment, I bought a mixed case from Geerlings & Wade, a company that describes itself as “the nation’s #1 direct merchant of fine wine.” (Wine.com claims to be the largest.)

I chose six bottles of Chateau des Clos, a red, and six of Cuvée Clemence, a white, both from Bordeaux. I chose the wines based on the online promotional descriptions and the price of $10 a bottle, plus shipping.

I found them both to be good, solid values, certainly better than many generic Bordeaux wines. The Clemence, a Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon blend, was round and medium bodied, with balanced fruit and a rich taste. The Chateau des Clos was a big wine, with interesting structure, enjoyable now, though I suspect another year of bottle aging might enhance the already appealing taste. Both are wines I might buy again.

High tech shopping vs. low tech shopping. In the end, you can find good wines either way. I’ll continue to go online, but I’ll never give up the irreplaceable experience of visiting a good wine shop.