Our in-house Sommellier, Julius P. Johnston, IV, answers our readers’ questions about fine wines in a continuing series…
Question: Are there any good online wine shops?
Answer: Yes.
Oh, should I elaborate? Ok.
One of my first stops online is to the wine-searcher.com. This site provides a virtual cornucopia of wine merchants carrying the wine(s) I am looking for. This site is a search engine rivaling the power and inflated valuation of the google dupe. Simply enter in the producer, wine-type, vintage, and… BAM! A list of proprietors with price emerges magically on your monitor.
My next stop is a little more obscure, simply because I like to be mysterious. I have a fetish with checking the latest auction prices on wines. One company that delivers sale results like no other: Acker, Merrall and Condit. A NYC outfit that may be a little rough around the edges and sincerely lacking in …whoops, I should probably tone this down for fear that my access may be revoked. Their website, ackerwines.com, provides live, streaming hammer prices and offers an easy-to-use search tool to track down any bottle sold and at what price/date/city it sold. They also have a nice gossip column calling out the embarrassing things that wealthy socialites get caught saying while drinking and spending in slipshod fashion.
Ok- for actually buying wine, I like to flip through brentwoodwines.com or finewinecollector.com, both of whom have paid me handsomely for this reference.