So imagine my pleasant surprise when I hear that Harris Teeter, opening a store in McHenry Row in Baltimore in December, might also be selling wine. Matt and I really like the Harris Teeter in our neighborhood; it’s clean and well stocked, without being too pricey. It has a lot of the international or organic foods you might expect at a specialty store, but also has your basic bread and butter. But wine?

The first person to answer my emails was Adam Borden, the president of Marylanders for Better Beer and Wine Laws, who commented on the original article linked above. He clarified that Harris Teeter would manage the Cellars, which is the wine shop in question, but the shop would be a separate space with its own entrance. That’s pretty much the information posted in this update.

I contacted Harris Teeter’s corporate office and was referred to Mark Sapperstein, who owns the Cellars. This is Sapperstein’s first store, so he wasn’t sure how common this set up was. However, Sapperstein would own the shop and take care of licensing and running the shop, while Harris Teeter would manage it. He said that there wouldn’t be much partnership between the two shops, but rather that the shops would merely be next to each other, much like most grocery store and liquor store relationships.

Harris Teeter seems to have a decent amount of information about wine on its website, with an established wine club and a showcased wine of the week. It may not sound like much, but it’s more than what our local liquor shop has. And it’s better than “wine product” (thanks to David White of Fermentation for that link).

There is a sampling event on Tuesday, December 6th at 5:30 pm at the new Harris Teeter, located at 1700 whetstone way, Baltimore, Maryland 21230. It sounds like I’ll get more of a feel for the set up that evening.

Anyone else hear about this new shop opening up? What wines would you want to see in your local grocery shop?

Honestly, I’ve had a very mixed experience with the clearance aisle. Our local wine and liquor shop will coordinate wine tastings on Friday and Saturday nights, but Matt and I have found it’s usually the cheap wine they’ve put on sale and are trying to move. We usually don’t take a bottle. In fact, until we stopped going altogether, it was usually an exercise in not spitting out bad wine.

But I’ve heard some great success stories. My mom’s liquor shop routinely has folks order a case and then decide against it, so the store owners crack open the case and sell it at a discount. I’ve seen wineries discount prior vintages to make room for newer bottles, and brought home some rather lovely wines as a result.

There is a fair amount of buzz (bad pun, sorry) about inexpensive wine on the blogsphere; the Frugal Wine Snob and The Wine Curmudgeon’s $10 Wine Hall of Fame come to mind.

But I haven’t seen much about discounted wine or fortuitous accidents. What have you found? Winemakers, have you had experiences like the ones Mr. McNichols describes?

Although early discussions on the tax rate proposed a gradual increase by 1% a year through 2012 – from the current 6% up to 9% – last-minute amendments this weekend scrapped that plan in favor of an all-at-once increase this year. The 50% bump puts Maryland well above neighboring Virginia (5%), Pennsylvania (6%), West Virginia (6%), D.C. (6%) and Delaware (an amazing 0%).

While the increase goes to a respectable cause full of political brownie points – school construction – I have to wonder what the effect might be on those delicate liquor stores we worked so hard to protect by barring wine shipments from out-of-state retailers when lower prices await consumers just across the borders of our (geographically) small state (can you feel the sarcasm?). Granted, consumers in the middle of the state like yours truly (Howard County) aren’t likely to drive 60+ minutes to avoid the 3% tax difference. But for residents in the DC suburbs, Frederick, or even the northern Baltimore suburbs might run across state lines to stock up for a big event. Technically that’s illegal – but I never saw that prevent those fireworks stands from hawking their business along I-70 north of Hagerstown or I-83 north of Baltimore. Consumers will follow the best deals.

Are you planning any interstate alcohol smuggling come July 1? If you do, you might want to consider hiring a vessel that can make the run in less than twelve parsecs.

One of my favorite wine shops (when I do buy wine at a shop, as most of my purchases seem to happen at tasting rooms or festivals) is The Wine Bin on the historic Main Street in Ellicott City. Their shop opened just a little over two years ago in the old firehouse at the eastern end of the historic district, a place close to my heart from my days working at the old B&O Railroad Station Museum back in high school. So you can imagine I was very pleased to discover their videoblog series on YouTube, and just in time for the holidays!

To date they’ve only got a couple videos posted to their YouTube channel but it looks like they’re planning monthly installments. Nice to see that it includes the signature personality of the management team, a great recommendation, and of course the resident canine! The Wine Bin is also known for their monthly “yappy hour” events where patrons may bring their dogs to a wine tasting. Make sure you stop by next time you’re picking up some antiques on Main Street!

The Wine Bin
8390 Main Street
Ellicott City, MD 21043

hocoblogs@@@

You have used groupon before, right? No? It’s a daily deal website where you buy the “deal” in advance. So in this case, pay $10 now, get the coupon, and then take that to the store for $20 worth of product before the expiration date.

The deals change daily so make sure you jump on it now if you’re interested!

While The Wife and I were killing time in Harbor East waiting for our movie to start (The Social Network, it was okay), we stumbled upon the newish wine bar Vino Rosina. Our usual (and only) go-to for a glass of wine in Harbor East is Cinghiale so a new option is most welcome. Their wine list is prolific if not expensive. The by-the-glass listing along offeres around twenty wines from each of the usual disciplines: red, white, bubbles, and rose. The Wife had a fantastic Rose from Provence. I thoroughly enjoyed a Gruner Veltliner from Austria. Nice, full bodied, dry, flat, just how I like ‘em.

The food menu is, well, head-spinning. Our bartender described one dish which used bone marrow as a core component. I passed on the bone marrow. Perhaps we aren’t as haute as we would like (it is Baltimore, after all). They go all-out on the menu, though. The executive chef told Dining At Large

Baltimore Sun blog Dining At Large had Chef Jesse Sandlin saying “We’re doing a really killer bison tartare from Gunpowder Farms,” she said. “We’re calling it Bison and Eggs. It’s very small, finely diced bison, Piave vecchio cheese, minced shallots, chopped parsley, a sauce of Worcestershire, Sriracha and Dijon, and a little poached quail egg.”

Vino Rosina features a gritty-yet-polished interior warehouse feel popularized by Chipotle. That’s not a knock, by the way. The whole thing has that “when will you guys be finished?” look. I dig it. I was especially smitten with the sweet light bulbs that hung down over the bar (pictured, right)

Check out Vino Rosina if you’re in the area and need a glass of wine.

Vino Rosina
507 S Exeter St
Baltimore, MD 21202
(410) 528-8600

Sponsor’s message Get 50% off shipping at WineChateau.com’s online wine store when you buy six or more bottles with checkout code “vino17″

From the Prince of Petworth blog (aside – PoP is a great resource if you spend any time in/around DC), I recently discovered the series of quick-hit wine videos produced by Ansonia Wines. It looks like the retailer is making a real effort to step up their new media efforts. Although it’s easy to draw a parallel with Gary Vaynerchuck here, the style is quite different while remaining very approachable. The production value is quite good and I’m always interested to learn more about the origins of a particular wine, which seems to be a point of emphasis in their work.

Beyond the videos, PoP mentions they’re integrating QR codes at the point of purchase  - another neat way to connect with the much-coveted “Millenial” wine crowd.

Do video reviews or discussions like this add any value to your wine experience? Do you know of any retailers or wineries in Maryland producing a video series?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the only deal I’ve heard of for (semi-regular) wine sales at a MD farmer’s market – a relationship made possible by the passage of the Maryland Winery Modernization Act. You know, that other wine bill that DID pass while the direct shipping bill languished in committee. If you’ll recall this post by Dave McIntyre back in June, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that Bethesda Central Farmer’s Market is leading the way on bringing you local wine along with your local food. Hopefully we’ll start to see a lot more of this!

The farmer’s market is only open on Sundays from 9-1 in the parking lot on Elm Street behind Jaleo, and Thursdays 3-7 on Bethesda Lane (between Elm and Bethesda Ave). MoCo and NW DC readers: do you already shop at this market? Are you more likely to go knowing you could pick up some local wine too?

Americans today are bombarded with opportunities to learn about wine. New books approach the subject from every conceivable angle, culinary schools offer classes at all levels, and the Internet, well, it just won’t shut up. But the most influential voice many people will hear belongs to their local retailer.

Lily Peachin, owner of Dandelion Wine, commented that…

“I wanted to be kind of a non-wine shop wine shop,” she said. “There’s soul here. You can tell good times have been had in the shop. You get that in restaurants and bars, but a lot of wine stores lack that.”

This is how a lot of wine shops feel overseas. Many of the shops I hit in Italy were cramped and stuffy, sometimes located in the basement of something nondescript like a Post Office. They all shared one thing in common: great wines and great people willing to help. Most wine shops here look like hotel lobbies, trying to look classic and elegant but end up bland and sanitary.

Link to post on The Pour.

Sponsored offer from WineChateau.com: Get 50% off shipping when you buy 6 or more bottles of French wine with coupon code “vino29″

Last week, Wine Business broke the sad news that uber-retailer Amazon is ending their push into the online wine retailing space. This comes on the heels of the much quieter news that Costco.com is ending their online wine sales.

These two companies, Amazon and Costco, total $92 billion in revenue per year. They know how to sell. Both do huge volumes of sales online, have gigantic customer bases, and have the shipping logistics in place to tackle almost anything.

Except wine.

So what makes wine so hard to deal with? Why would two gigantic retailers decide that the online wine market just isn’t worth it?

Wine is kind of a pain to keep in inventory. Wine isn’t like a book. When you sell books, you enter the titles, the ISBNs, and the quantity of each that you own into your system and you’re off and running with your inventory system. If you sell patio furniture, likewise. If you run out of books, you call the publisher and get more books. If it is out of print, you scour the used book market.

Wine doesn’t work like that. Retailers have much smaller quantities to deal with, often into the single digits, leading to much faster turnover of products. Each wine is specific to the year and size of the bottle meaning that Opus One is not just Opus One, it is the 2004 Opus One and cannot be confused with the 2005 Opus One. Wine is an international product and can’t be relied upon to have a UPC attached. Retail stock must be under some sort of climate control in your stock is going to be sitting for any length of time.

All the headaches of slinging wine means that real time inventory in online wine sales is kind of a big deal. Even in this day of unprecedented ease of use in developing web applications, real time inventory is a feat few have accomplished.

I hear you saying:

C’mon, Amazon had a net income of over half a billion dollars last year. They couldn’t get this figured out?

Granted, it isn’t rocket science. In Amazon’s case, they were met with two other major factors that contributed to their decision.

They lost a major fulfillment partner. New Vine Logistics went bust earlier this year. and for some time their future was very much in doubt. I had worked with New Vine Logistics in the past, and they were among the best in the business when it came to receiving, storing, and fulfilling wine to customers. The loss of this major partner must have been crippling to Amazon.

Interstate shipping laws are just too much of a pain in the ass to deal with. The stick-in-the-mud legislators and wine distributors will ruin anyone’s day who dares try to end-around on them. Wine can currently be shipped to about 35 states but within that club there are many different variations. Some have limits on the volume, some limit the number of bottles, some limit the retail value. You read this blog, you read others that cover wine shipping, you know it is insane.

Amazon quitting in the face of all this is scary. It means that Superman stared down Lex Luthor and decided “Nah, not fighting this guy.” Sherlock Holmes did not get his man. The inmates have taken over the asylum.

So, where to now? Wine consumers have lost what could have been a major retailer using their immense size to deliver good wines, high availability, and possibly lower prices. They lose a gigantic company who may have acted like an ally in the fight to get the disaster of wine shipping laws cleared up. The liquor distributors shovel millions of dollars to make wine shipping difficult for retailers. It will take millions to defeat them. Those millions will not come from Amazon. If you’re local, you can volunteer for Marylanders for Better Beer and Wine Laws and contact your state representatives to get their take on direct wine shipping.