Citywise
The Best Texas Wine Stores
Coping with the Wine Panic of '73
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Prices at Richard's are generally reasonable and competitive, although they may occasionally be 25¢ or 50¢ higher than other stores. Several bottles of 1966 Chateau d'Yquem carried tags for $23 recently—a good three to five dollars higher than elsewhere. But this is presumably the exception and not the rule.
Good wines can be found in other Houston stores, but none of them has the scope and reliability of Richard's. Second place should probably go to Cobweb, with several locations, including one store emphasizing wines at 2036 Westheimer. The French selection is distinctly better than the German; prices are average. Joseph's at 1408 Westheimer is a picturesque, ramshackle little place with a front room set aside for wine-tasting. The selection is interesting and occasionally intriguing (it may be the only place in Texas that stocks a variety of Rumanian and Australian wines), but the prices are too high. The 1967 Maximin Gruenhauser Moselle offered for $7 here could be had for $3 a few blocks away at Cobweb. Other price discrepancies were not so great, but there are few bargains at Joseph's.
Both Foley's and Sakowitz department stores sell imported wines. You can occasionally pick up something unusual and worthwhile there, but for the most part they are substantially overpriced. Sakowitz is the better of the two. Foley's is most dependable for its sales and some special bottlings under its own label; many of the other bottles are of the sort that look better than they really are.
If you do your wine shopping in San Antonio, you will wind up at the main branch of the Texas Store, 4820 Broadway. A process of elimination will get you there if nothing else does, for there are very few serious competitors.
This particular Texas Store belongs to the cardboard-boxes-on-the-floor school, which is all to the good. The selection is clearly the best in Bexar County, and the prices, though higher than in most other Texas cities, are competitive within San Antonio. (The Chassagne-Montrachet that was $3.49 at Marty's in Dallas was $4.99 here.) Other branches have less-complete selections, though oddly enough, the prices for identical bottles can vary as much as 75¢ from one store to another. Since all the wines are selected and purchased by the main store, there is only a marginal price motive to visit the others. We frankly have little affection for the lavish branch inside North Star Mall, where a clerk who observed us making notes on the posted prices rumbled over and announced, "The manager doesn't like people writing down his prices. You can memorize them if you want, but don't write them down." Wine-buying as an Undercover Activity?
Don's and Ben's, 6003 West Avenue at Loop 410, is their principal competitor. The selection of German wines is pathetic, with only a few estate-bottled Rhines bobbing in a sea of Liebfraumilch and Moselbluemchen. With French wines they are considerably better stocked, and the Burgundy and Bordeaux prices seem a little lower than the Texas Stores. Otherwise, you might try the Handy-Andy (yes, that's right) at Central Park Mall or at the corner of Nacogdoches and New Braunfels. The management recently decided to go into the wine business as an experiment and the results, unlike most grocery-store efforts, are nothing to be ashamed of. As a final alternative, you can do what a growing number of San Antonians are doing and make a wine-buying excursion to Dan's in Austin.
Dan's is unusual among liquor-store chains in that the decision whether or not to order a particular wine is made independently at each of the three branches. As a result the store at 5353 Burnet Road has a negligible selection; the wine department under the supervision of knowledgeable, crew-cut Bill Tullos at 1600 Lavaca has a number of excellent buys in its relatively small inventory; and the big, cluttered warehouse at 1327 South Congress, ruled by Dan himself, has as good a selection as can be found in Central Texas and among the lowest prices of any fine store in Texas.
A bottle of 1970 Steinberger Riesling carries a price tag of $2.99 at Dan's. The same bottle lists for $3.29, $3.59, and $3.79 at various Dallas stores; in Houston and San Antonio the asking price ranges from $3.99 to $4.99. The differences are usually less dramatic, of course, but the combination of selection and price makes this establishment one of the best bets in Texas wine-buying.
Reuben's Bottle Shop, 1209 Red River, is another reliable store. Owner Reuben Kogut is attempting to make his tiny shop into a center of quality wines. Most of the inventory has been selected with some care, and you will seldom run across an inferior bottle outside the very lowest price range. But the better wines unfortunately tend to be somewhat overpriced; for example, that 1970 Steinberger costs $3.95 here.
There is a smattering of other decent wine stores in Austin, but except for the occasional worthwhile bottle they have nothing to offer that cannot be found better at Dan's or Reuben's. The Centennial Stores, incidentally, (including the large wine shop at 2932 Guadalupe) have nothing whatever to do with the excellent Centennial chain in Dallas—a fact that would readily become apparent upon close inspection of their mediocre and pretentious wine offerings.
Texans have a habit of looking down their noses with some disdain at Fort Worth, but in the case of fine wines (like other art objects) the big cow town more than holds its own with its sophisticated urban rivals. The best place to shop is Cook's Discount Liquors, 6387 Camp Bowie Road. Despite its suburban-discount-city exterior, this dandy store closely rivals Dan's for bargain prices and has a remarkably varied selection. Comparison pricing indicates the "discount" in the title is for real.
An equally good store, with more sophisticated decor and somewhat higher prices, is King's Liquor, 2810 West Berry. Like Cook's, King's offers an extensive selection of not always distinguished imported wines at reasonable prices. A clerk told us proudly that "we have lots more in the back," but added that they had no list of them available for viewing.
In the wine business it is traditional to give the customer a 10 per cent discount on the purchase of a 12-bottle case. Few clerks will do so unless you ask. Occasionally you will run across one who will try to bluff you out of it; the favorite song-and-dance these days is that wine prices have been going up so fast the dealer just can't afford to give discounts any more. Nonsense, of course. Don't let them buffalo you into paying more.
To the best of our knowledge, all of the stores recommended in this article offer case discounts. Most of them give the standard 10 per cent. Even then there are variations, however: Reuben's and Richard's give 10 per cent off on a "mixed" case (as many as 12 different kinds of wine), while Centennial in Dallas requires that the case be all of one kind, six-and-six, or (if "mixed") that all the bottles carry the same price tag.
Four stores have unorthodox discount policies. Marty's gives you the equivalent of one-and-one-fourth bottles free with each purchase of 12. Sigel's simply knocks $1 off the price of each three bottles you buy, mixed or not, making them an excellent bet for cheaper wines and a losing proposition for the more expensive varieties. Joseph's has the most generous approach: 10 per cent off each three bottles, or two free bottles in each 12. The main Dan's store in Austin gives at least 10 per cent on mixed cases, but this has been known to rise to 15 per cent depending upon the mood Dan himself happens to be in.
If you are dealing with a store that gives a mixed case discount, you would be well advised to take advantage of it by choosing a dozen different bottles of wines you think you'll like, taking your discount, and carrying them home to sample one-by-one until you find the ones you especially prefer. You can go back and get larger quantities later.
Finally, if all else fails and you simply cannot find that exotic Tokay Essenz, 1929 Chateau-Haut-Brion, or Schloss Johannisberger Trockenbeerenauslese you've been dreaming of, or if you simply want to peruse a wider selection you can always order from New York (Sherry-Lehmann, Inc., Mr. Sam Aaron, 679 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10021) or Washington (Calvert's Wine Shop, Mr. Alfio Moriconi, 2312 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007).
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