My in-laws hosted Easter this year and normally I bring the wine however they said they would cover it this year. For those who don’t know Total Wine has really taken the Twin Cities Wine Market by storm. Many municipal liquor operations have lost significant profits with them on the borders (article 1, article 2 )
I will give them credit they market really well and make sure you know they are in town. While I find their prices ok they don’t beat the sale prices of Surdyk’s, Haskell’s and Wine Streets. They also don’t have the unique selections of Sunfish Cellars, Thomas Liquors and Hennepin Lake. One thing I find amusing is their sales people desire to sell you their house brands (winery direct). These are wines they make maximum profit on and these two below show you what I think of them.
2016 Château de Nages Costières-de-Nîmes Rosé ButiNages – France, Rhône, Southern Rhône, Costières-de-Nîmes (4/1/2018)
Simple rose with sweet fruits and subtle spice. Drink now. (82 points)
Jeb Dunnuck gave this 90 points. One of the worst Rose wines I have tasted in years. If it wasn’t Easter I might have been in the 70s.
2013 Cruz Alta Malbec Grand Réserve – Argentina, Mendoza (4/1/2018)
Terrible wine. This is no April fools joke. Easter egg dye, dirt and burnt toast. Worst wine I have tasted this year. (71 points)
As the main wine blogger in the Twin Cities I am very active on the world wide wine blogs and I started this discussion on the best wine discussion forum in the world.
I will say this if Total Wine recommends a wine and you don’t like it just return it and get your money back!!!
Thanks for the heads up. I get a lot of their sales people trying to recommend a different wine then the one I went into buy.