The wine drinking season is upon us - although some people may say that year-round is the wine drinking season. But I like to drink a lot of full-bodied red wines during the winter months and keep to my beer during the warm time of the year. I've been checking out a lot of wine/liquor stores recently and one that I found in the Chicago area was Famous Liquors in suburban Lombard (see map).
Famous Liquors is a pretty good sized place - their floor space is about 8,000 sq. feet. They have a large area for their wine selections - many of the labels I wasn't familiar with. In fact, I had a lot of trouble finding ANY wines that I was even familiar with.
I talked with Jeff Sukowski, the wine department manager, and he explained to me that Famous Liquors doesn't use the normal distributors that Sam's Wines and Binny's use, mainly because they don't want to have to compete with them. "Those guys buy so much wine that they can undercut us on price," Jeff explained.
One of the wines that he showed me was an Ironstone 2002 Reserve Cab Franc that they were featuring that month. He said, "This is a great wine that no one knows about." He said the Ironstone vineyards provide a number of wineries around the U.S. with their grapes.
The price on the Reserve Cab Franc from Ironstone seemed reasonable - $16.99 a bottle - so I grabbed one to try.
Jeff also showed me a Cambria Katherine's Vineyard Chardonnay 2004 that they had on special. I'd heard of the Cambria wines before, but hadn't drank any. He said, "You'll like this. It's fruity, but not sweet. Wholesome, but not overpowering."
Cindy's been drinking a lot of white wine lately, so I grabbed a bottle of the Cambria at $12.99. I thought I'd give it a shot.
Actually, the beer department at Famous Liquors was pretty impressive. I thought the prices were a little high, but the selection - both domestics and imports - was broad and varied. And they actually had a bottle of the 2005 Samuel Adams Utopia beer there - the first time I'd actually seen the ultra high-end 24 proof beer (that sells for around $400 a bottle).
And they also had a good liquor department at Famous Liquors. Their vodka selection was one of the biggest I'd ever seen. It included the Luksusowa potato vodka that a friend had turned me onto. And they had it in three sizes - 375 ml, 750 ml, and 1.75 ml. Plus, they had a pretty good selection of Scotch and bourbons on hand, as well.
And they also had a very good party area that included a number of glasses, shirts, premium goods and other items from a number of breweries. They had some pretty nifty novelty items on sale in the little area.
I didn't think the prices at Famous Liquor were all that great, but their selection rivaled many of the wine and liquor stores in the Chicago area. I'll keep checking back with them when I have the time.
Comments