GRAND WINE AND LIQUOR
For my analysis, I decided to visit Grand Wine and Liquor in Queens, located at 30-05 31st St, Astoria. As advised, I contacted the store manager through email to arrange an appointment prior to my visit. Unfortunately I was told by a lady in the store that GM was in the store but unable to meet me. Unable to tell me in person, she emailed me saying to arrange another day with her. Not wasting any more time I decided to just do a little tour around myself with no assistance offered and took a couple of picture with permission.
The store itself is quiet big, selling a large variety of wines, and small variety of liquors. The newly renovated store is neat with clean wooden floorings and glass windows that stretch the entire width of the store. The store has two long wine racks displaying their variety of the wines. And at the back end are three large chiller for some white wines, champagnes and sparkling wines.
The first rack and on the right side are a large variety of American wines coming mainly from California and Oregon. The bottles are arranged according to the state/region and the type of grapes. On the front section of the shelves that is labelled “Staff Pick”, there is a small selection of wines from various regions. And for each different wine producer, small notes are written on a cue card which I believe are positive feedbacks from customers. On the left side of the rack, three quarter of the wines are French wines, offering wines from Bordeaux, Loire, Burgundy, Alsace and Rhone. And on the last one quarter of the rack, it is shared between Germen and Austrian wines. Both have a very small selection of wines offering only one white wine from each country.
On the second rack, on the right side, it is shared between Chile, Argentina and Australia. The Chilean and Australian wines offers a good variety of wines and balanced between the white and the red wines. As for the Argentinian and New Zealand wines, only a small variety of Argentinian wines, offering only Chardonnay for their white wine and mostly white for the New Zealand wines.
On the other side of the rack, it is shared between four categories of wines, South African, Dessert wines, sparkling wines and champagnes. The South African wines offers a good variety of wines with balanced selection between the red and white. A small selection of dessert wines offered are Sherry, Marsala and Port. And I’m not sure if Ice wine is considered dessert wine, but I was also available. As for the sparkling and champagne wines, surprisingly the store offers only a small selection.
Coming back on a different day with an appointment made again with the GM. And again she’s unable to meet me in person to answer the questions that I’ve prepared. She sent a store assistant to assist me with the questions. The questions are:
How do the store choose their wine selection?
- They choose their wines based on the customers’ demands. And Greek wines is one that they have included as it was more demanded around their neighborhood. Also they try to balance the selection of wines from the Old and New world
How do you store your wines?
- They don’t have any wine cellar or chiller rooms. They only store them in the basement and only controlling the temperature in the basement.
Any particular vineyard/wineries that you get the wines from?
- And the assistance only recommended to visit vineyard in Long Island.
The only negative about the store is the GM. Very unprofessional when it comes to replying emails. Even when appointment was made for my second visit, she was unable to meet me.
I found your experience at the wine to be knowledge and inviting because the wine shop you went to had a huge selection to choice from that could fit well with anyone’s taste.
I think i might actually go here, from the pictures you put up; it looks like it really big and their wine selections is a place we haven’t studied on. Which, makes it more exciting to learn something new about another part of the wine world.
I would like to visit after I read your post. I wondered that how the owner and DM would know the customer demands. Can we request which wine we want to buy?
Yes you could request. As I notice some customers come in the store to pick up their wines. I believe for their customer’s demand it would come through the types of wines tha their customer ask for and the types of wines that are mostly sold.
Yes Grand is a large shop with much to offer. I like that you made the most of your time even though the manager could not assist you. Your observations will assist your growing knowledge of wine throughout the semester.