As a much younger man, I spent far too much time chasing after wine and waves. Only once did the twain ever meet. That was thanks to an expanded definition of full-service at Pop’s Wine & Spirits, my longest running source for wine.

It’s easy to overlook Pop’s, located in a plain building on the commercial strip of Island Park, Long Island. This modest village, home to Alfonse D’Amato, a former senator of New York, and site of numerous fuel-storage tanks, is not what you’d call prime wine country. Opened by Greek-born Peter Poulos in 1944, Pop’s originally sold only basic booze and wine. Most likely, it would have stayed that way if Peter’s son Nicholas, a newly minted engineer in 1976, had been able to land a decent job. “All I was offered was repairman-style jobs,” said Mr. Poulos, now 51. “I chose my father’s store instead. And that’s when I caught the wine bug.”

Though raised in Island Park, Mr. Poulos was clear-eyed about its lack of attractions to outsiders, even as he built a wine and liquor inventory that now comprises 7,500 items. “I learned very quickly that people from the city or even other parts of Long Island wouldn’t come out here,” he said. “Service and price had to quickly come into the equation.” In the late 1970s, Mr. Poulos put two small advertisements in the New York Times, one of which I spotted. It promised to beat other wine shops’ prices by 20% with free delivery. I ordered a case of Chateau St. Jean Cabernet Sauvignon, a Sonoma wine, which I’d planned to buy in Manhattan. Pop’s was as good as its word.

And so, by phone alone, I became a regular customer of a store I’d never seen. Curiosity got the best of me, and one day about 20 years ago I took the LIRR to visit Pop’s. It was mid-December, and holiday carols, courtesy of the local American Legion, blared scratchily from a loudspeaker as I walked past the village hall. Just 45 minutes from Manhattan, I felt worlds away from New York. That trip to Island Park wasn’t one I cared to make regularly.

In the early 1980s, Mr. Poulos made it easier for absentee shoppers to check out his offerings by mailing out the Hot List, a periodic wine catalog of nearly 200 pages. The first few pages were devoted to “Featured Wines,” often at astonishingly low prices, the result of wholesaler closeouts. “I won’t always have the lowest price on every bottle, and customers will call to complain that they paid $12 for a wine that they found elsewhere for $10,” Mr. Poulos said. “But I hope that they’ll stick with us so long as the really great deals keep coming.”

Hot List deals now flash across the Internet at the store’s Web site, www.popswine.com. But I still look forward to the irregular arrival of the Hot List in my mailbox. Unlike many other wine shop catalogs, the Hot List is printed on the cheapest newsprint. Graphics are inelegant. “I keep it basic to send the message that we’re all about value,” Mr. Poulos said. “Slick paper and fancy layout isn’t us.” About half of Pop’s sales, according to Mr. Poulos, are made by phone or on the Internet.

Last Friday, for the first time in years, I again took the LIRR out to Pop’s. Just inside the front door, one of those signature killer deals was waiting: Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais-Villages Nouveau, Chateau de la Grange, 2003 at $2.69 a bottle (see tasting notes below). A few steps deeper into this densely stocked shop, I came across another true bargain, this one at a different price point. It was the “super-Tuscan” Tignanello, vintage 2000. At $58.59, it was about 30% less than at other retailers I checked.

Pop’s is not for snobs. It boasts an array of liqueurs in wild colors that would make the showiest reef fish look pasty-faced. There’s a full selection of “box wine,” the best of which may be Hardy’s Shiraz at $14.16 for three liters. Off to one side is the “Fine Wine Room,” a narrow-laned repository in which Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1966 at $279.95 faces Monterey Vineyard’s Chardonnay at $8.52. Odd-penny prices, Mr. Poulos explained, are the result of not rounding up. ‘I do the math on our mark-up,” he said, “and wherever it falls, it falls.”

You may remember the wine world ruckus, a few years back, over “Two Buck Chuck,” a line of Charles Shaws’s red and white wines offered at $1.99 by Trader Joe’s in California (more in other states). Not to be outdone, Pop’s offered, last year, “Two Buck Bob,” a South African wine made by Robert’s Rock. To get the price down to $2.16, Mr. Poulos bought all the wholesaler’s 1,600 cases. “This wine was not for keeping, and we told that to our customers. A wine that’s not worth drinking is no bargain at any price,” he said.

Pop’s has never failed to deliver my wine on the appointed day. And once, it even delivered me. On that day, a few years after my first visit to Pop’s, I had lugged my surfboard on the subway and LIRR from Penn Station to Long Beach in the hope of finding waves. But the surfing was poor, and after half an hour in the water, I gave up. Was this day salvageable? I found a phone booth and called Pop’s, located a few miles away. Would it be convenient, I asked, to pick up me and my surfboard? If so, I was ready to shop for wine

Fifteen minutes later, the Pop’s van pulled up to the boardwalk. I slid my surfboard in back. At the shop, I selected a mixed case of wine for later delivery while trying not to get too much sand on the floor. Then the van took me and my surfboard three blocks to the LIRR station. That day, Pop’s was truly a full-service wine shop.

Pop’s Wines & Spirits, 256 Long Beach Road, Island ParkN.Y. 516-431-0025, www.popswine.com. Delivery on orders more than $100 is free from ‘Poughkeepsie to Montauk.’

Recommended Wines

BEAUJOLAIS-VILLAGES NOUVEAU 2003, Chateau de la Grange, Georges Duboeuf ($2.69) A brutally hot summer meant ripe wine. The color remains youthful purple, and the wine sings with ripe cherry aromas. Modestly flavorful. In sum, a wine that is authentic to its place and will still be a good quaff when warm weather comes. Pop’s outdid itself on price.

TIGNANELLO 2000, ANTINIORI ($58.59) Why is this famed Super-Tuscan selling at a cut-rate price? “The 2000 is sandwiched between two classic vintages,” Mr. Poulos said. “It kind of got lost.” A blend of 80% sangiovese, 15% cabernet sauvignon, and 5% cabernet franc, this is the kind of wine that showed Bordeaux’s top tier that it had no lock on complexity.

DOMAINE CHANDON PINOT MEUNIER 2001 ($18.59) Pop’s offers its share of oddities, and this is one. Pinot Meunier is typically subsumed into champagne blends. Here, it solos as a red wine with provocative aromas and tastes of exotic spice, including ginger. Not a fleshy wine, but lively and different.