Going Online for Wine

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

As an indolent young man, I haunted wine shops excessively. Now I do the same with wine Web sites. Happily, wine is well adapted to being shopped on the Internet. You don’t know how sweaters or shoes will feel or fit until they’re in your hands or on your feet. But you won’t know the “feel or fit” of a wine until you’ve poured it, and that’s true whether you buy it in a real or virtual wine shop. And if you find the sight of thousands of bottles in a well stocked wine shop daunting, you may find that the same shop’s searchable Web site will keep you calm.


Especially now, as the holidays approach, the city’s best wine shops can be hectic places. Harried salespeople may not be able to give adequate advice. The Web sites of these shops, however, offer efficient shopping, providing that they work smoothly, as those recommended below do. And all provide reliable delivery.


ZACHYS.COM


Zachys, the major wine arsenal in Scarsdale, N.Y., boasts a wide-ranging online shopping site. It’s well organized, and goes the extra mile by offering interactive consumer help.


While a standard “advanced search” for wines works well, I especially like “quick search,” a handy tool to bring up, say, lists of half bottles by country of origin. There are also “Live Help” and “Ask the Expert” options. Current features include a large selection of wines from the Wine Spectator’s new “Top 100,” including no. 1 Chateau Rieussec 2001, a Sauternes, in half, whole, and magnum bottles. Twenty-one wine gift baskets are shown, ranging from a “Bottled Sun” assortment of six superior Beaujolais ($110) to a trio of Haut Brion vintages at $899. My wish would be the basket of white burgundies from Vincent Girardin for $175.


Prices for national delivery options – including next-day air and refrigerated truck – aren’t listed. Local delivery to Manhattan, I was told by phone, is $6. As of last weekend, “over 800 orders were backed up,” but I was assured that rush delivery can be arranged in one business day.


SHERRY-LEHMANN.COM


Sherry-Lehmann, the blueblood of city wine merchants, currently sells more than 20% of its wine over the Internet. Like the Madison Avenue shop, the site radiates decorous good cheer, which is backed up by a muscular search engine. “We didn’t want the focus to be on technology but on wine,” explained Shyda Gilmer, who is in charge of the site. “Our first Web site builders couldn’t get that. We had to take the Web site out of their hands and bring it in-house. Around four years ago, we thought we finally had something that resembled what we are: wine merchants.”


The Bordeaux selection is especially wide and deep. It includes 12 choices for Chateau Pichon Lalande, a top-rung Pauillac, for example, and 13 for Chateau Cheval Blanc, the best-known Saint-Emilion, including the great and fully matured 1982 vintage at $895.


Gifts of wine come in a myriad of fancifully named packages, including Apple, Baguette, and Grand Pannier baskets, Westhampton, Southampton, and East Hampton Hampers, and Le Can Can, imprinted with Toulouse-Lautrec motifs. For a silk-stocking shop, prices are surprisingly modest. The six-bottle “Tour de France” in Le Can-Can, for example, is $92.50 plus shipping.


Sherry-Lehmann also offers gift cards in Toulouse-Lautrec cases starting at $50.They can be ordered on 366 1299 448 1315366 1695 414 1711line but must be mailed. Three-day Fedex shipping costs $5.95.


This Web site’s shipping information is precise. Local delivery is free on orders over $124.95. Otherwise, it’s $13.95 an order. National ground shipping is $19.95 for up to six bottles, and $34.95 a case. Air shipment is higher.


POPSWINE.COM


Years ago, I eagerly awaited the arrival in my mailbox of the Hot List from Pop’s, a shop located in Island Park, best known as the Long Island home of former Senator Alfonse D’Amato. The opening pages of the Hot List featured unbeatable values. Now it’s all a click away.


The shop’s no-nonsense site aims for “horsepower rather than beauty,” as proprietor Nick Poulos succinctly put it. An engineer by training, Mr. Poulos put up his Web site “as a static page in 1995” and as an interactive Web site in 1997. It’s a lean yet superbly functional site that makes sense out of an inventory of more than 7,000 different wines.


Pop’s keeps close track of recommendations from the Wall Street Journal’s “Personal Journal” wine column and delights in undercutting listed prices. There are no fancy gift baskets at this site, just an easy-to-use inventory searcher. It’s all about the wine, and nothing but wine.


I’ve been ordering from Pop’s for more than 25 years, and my shipments have never failed to be delivered to Manhattan on the appointed day. Delivery is free from Montauk to Poughkeepsie on orders over $100. Orders received by 6 a.m. will go out the same business day. The site provides a link to UPS to estimate delivery charges nationally. The shop will issue a credit for packing crates returned to it.


BBR.COM


The British wine shop Berry Bros. & Rudd has been at 3 Saint James’s Street in London since 1698. For the port lover on your gift list, BBR is nonpareil. Port has been called as hallowed a British tradition as foxhunting, and currently far less controversial. The shop’s “Berry’s Own” selections take advantage of relationships with growers in Portugal and Spain that go back for many generations. That’s something no American wine shop can claim. BBR also offers its own bottlings of sherry and Madeira.


This ancient London shop has built a great Web site. But why should we, who live in the greatest wine city in the world, pay the freight to buy British? To buy port, sherry, and Scotch sourced and labeled by BBR, of course. It’s more than cachet. “We try to source benchmark products from each relevant area,” said BBR buyer Simon Field, M.W. (Master of Wine). “We are the leaders in the U.K. in vintage port.” Some are British oddities, like Berry’s Own Selection Crusted Port ($235.66 a case in bond), a multi-vintage blend. Berry’s 1997 Late Bottled Vintage Port Churchill’s ($169.28 a case in bond) approaches the fiery intensity of more expensive vintage port. Other fortified wine specialties include sherry and Madeira in numerous styles.


BBR promises express delivery to New York in five to six days and costs about $300, including customs clearance. Twenty-one-day delivery costs about $165. While these delivery costs are high, they are partially offset by tax-free prices, which, when the wines are bought by the case, are about 25% less than the single-bottle retail price on Saint James’s Street.


This Web site includes what amounts to a mini-handbook of wine information, including grape types, food matches, and vintage charts going back to the 19th century.


The New York Sun

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