Cost Plus World Market
This Saturday and Sunday at California Cost Plus World Market stores there is a “Wine Blowout” sale. The sale says up to 50% off on over 75 wines plus an additional 10% off when you buy 4 or more bottles. In addition but somewhat confusing is another wine sale going on until January 16. It is worth a look if you are near one of the Cost Plus stores. If you have a tablet or smartphone be sure to use Wine-Searcher.com to find out what a wine is selling for elsewhere.
Stonestown Trader Joe’s in San Francisco
Vintage Wine Taster Mike reports that this store has Parson’s Creek Shiraz/Cab for $15, which is less than half the regular price. They also have the Donatello Chardonnay for $10 (our review) and magnums of the Tribunal at $16.50 (our review). These wines are few and far between at most TJ’s in the S.F. Bay Area
BevMo 90 Point Wines
I just received an email about BevMo’s huge sale on 90-Pt and above wines. When I perused the hefty 18 pages of 90-Pt wines, with the exception of about 5 wines, all ratings are by BevMo’s Wilfred Wong. This is somewhat misleading in my view.
The Results of the 2012 Chronicle Wine Competition
This past week some 65 wine judges evaluated 5500 wines at this annual competition. This is by far and away the biggest wine competition around, and you can get some great leads by browsing the list of medal winners. Personally, I just look at the “Best of Class” and the Gold Medal winners. The nice thing about this competition is that the wines are placed into categories by price. For example, you can find all the Chardonnay winners in the $10 to $14.99 category. What a great idea!
I just came back from Cost Plus. There are some good deals but then again wines that appear to be on sale are really not. Last week Mike purchased the Santa Ema Merlot for $9.99. This week the price is $10.99. But, you get a 10% discount when you buy 4, mix or match. It works out to the same price as last week.
Funny I noticed the same thing regarding the BevMo sale wines as mostly WW’s 90 pointers. One exception is the Cotes du Tauch Fitou which scored 93 on Wilfred’s rating. Even if you dumb it down by a couple of points, it is still a 90 pointer.
I will have to try that wine. Thanks for the tip. Many of these 90 Point wines are BevMo exclusives and that is one reason why no one else rates them. It is up to us to give them an unbiased score.
Joe