Grand Wine & Liquor
This is a photo of the outside store view of Grand Wine and Liquor.
I didn’t really like the outside view of the shop because it doesn’t look like a wine shop. In my honest opinion, It looked like a boring looking grocery store, until you look up to the writing and see the “Grand Wine and Liquor” and the little wine bottles drawing.
But as I entered the store, I can see that the shop was huge, has a lot of space and friendly employees. All the employees greeted me and smiled, which I loved because not a lot of shops actually have employees that nice nowadays. I first took a look around the shop, then I was approached by an employee asking me if I needed any help, I told him I wanted to speak to the owner or someone in charge, he said sure and walked to the back room. A few seconds later a man in a suit stepped out and greeted me and I told him about my analysis and if I could ask him a few questions, he said yes of course. And I went on by asking him, how did this shop happen/open? He saidĀ his great grandfather, Jake Battipaglia, opened this shop 75 years ago, and it is still up and running. His great grandfather was an immigrant from Greece, who came to America for a better job and life for him and his family. I also asked him how long did he study wine and why did he, he said he’s been studying wine for all of his life because he grew up with it being the family business and that he has a wine doctorate. Another question I had for him was “if a wine was not selling as you wanted it too, what would you do?”. He said that they would discontinue the wine or mark it down or put it on sale to get all the remaining wines out of the store and then he would never order that wine again.
After he answered my questions, I asked him to just show me around the shop and to show me the wines I had to take pictures of. The shop’s wines were organized by country and within each country, the red and white wines were separated.
This picture is what you see once you enter the shop. Also shows you some of the countries and their wines.
This is one of the shop’s sections for Greece and its wines.
Wine # 1 – Shelf Talker
These wines with rectangle paper, that have the red and blue writing on it are “Shelf Takers”. They are because customers can easily see what’s inside of the wine and how the wine tastes.
Wine # 2 – Red Wine from Spain
This wine is called Goru Verde and it is a red wine from Spain.
Wine # 3 – Sparkling Wine not from France
This is a sparkling wine not from France but from Italy called Cannonau di Sardegna.
Wine # 4 – Red wine from a region I did not know made wine.Ā
This is a red wine called 19 Crimes from Australia, which I did not know made wine.
This was every educational for me because i am not familiar with this wine as well. red wines is my preference, so I will do some research to find this wine.
The history behind this wine store is definitely something interesting and the fact that the store has been running for multiple generations for 75 years is definitely a feat! Meeting someone from the family who runs the business must have given such great insight on how the business is especially in New York City.
I could understand how the outside is a very generic look because I too experienced the same thing when I visited Table Wine in Jackson Heights. Although it wasn’t as glamorous as other stores the inside makes up for it with a variety of wines from different regions.
The Battipagliaās are well known in the industry. Many family members work in the business.
19 Crimes is marketed in an innovative manner. Look it up.