How To Find Great Wine Online: USOUNDS Sommellier Answers Your Letters

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.

Posted by usounds at December 02, 2005 09:03 PM | TrackBack

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