After the end of the hard study this week, I visited two wine retail stores on Friday, the Astor and the Flatiron. I did some online research about both of them, but I will focus on Astor. Astor Wine & Spirits is a great place to purchase wines and to learn about wines. Because this store has a lot of categories of wines, especially for the French Wine lover. Astor is more focused on French wines, so they have the separate shelves of different regions in France. They also have wines from different countries. Such as Italy, Germany(doesn’t have an independent self), Spain, Cava, Greece, California, New York, Canada, Pacific Northwest and Argentina. By reading these “Shelf Talkers” you will learn some interesting facts about the country.
I like the way they organized the wines and provided a lot of information on the shelf because this place is so big, which means they won’t have enough staff available for all customer. And the customers can read and desire which wine they will like to purchase.
Except for the information tag of the wine, some of them will have “staff pick” next to it. This card explains to the customer why they personally recommend this wine.
I’m glad to have a chance to talk to Ms. Laura Atbashian, she is the wine buyer assistant, very friendly and knowledgeable. She showed me the best seller shelf which they put the wines that are popular.
Best Value Red Wine
Best Value White Wine
I asked Ms. Atbashian about how they store certain wines, she said the room temperature in their store should be kept at 65°F, which was the temperature for most of the wines. And they have a row of refrigerators for Japanese Sake and others. And the temperature control room which controls the temperature at 55°F for the expansive wines and the wines need to stay at the particular temperature. 
In this temperature control room, you can find the high-quality wines, low sulfur and no sulfur wines included. Those wines that place on the wall are the most expensive wines in the store.
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- There are also wines hidden behind the shelves.
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- Vintage 1964
She also told me how to store the opened bottles, the most important thing is to keep the oxygen out and don’t leave the opened bottles of wines for more than 3 days. And then she showed me how they store the opened bottles for the guest tasting event.
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- Special caps to keep the oxygen out.
Ms. Atbashian told me she developed her wine knowledge from the WSET course, it is a 10 weeks course to study wine which she could go to different countries to taste and learn about different wines. And she also enjoys to work in Astor and keeps developing her knowledge by tasting wines in their store.
These are some wines from the countries we haven’t learned.
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- Australian White
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- Australian White
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- Australian Eiswein
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- Portugal
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- Canada Riesling
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- Chilean White
Overall, I enjoyed this experience to visit Astor, it expanded my vision and knowledge about wines.
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- Japanese Sake
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- Champagne
Amazing pictures, thanks for sharing.
I really like your post. You included a lot of pictures and the concept to preserve wine is very smart. When I visited Astor, I did not explore the “cool” room as much as you did so I’m glad you went into detail about it!
I like how you posted so many photos of different wines from the Astor Wine & Spirits; it is very detailed.
A lot of information from you. This is the store that I really want to visit when i have a chance. From your pictures, it gives me the feeling that this wine store is huge with a lot of information. I believe I can definitely learn something from the posters that they have when i go visit.
I am happy that by the end of the semester we tried most wines you photographed. During the wines of the new world course we will taste wine from Canada!!!