Wine Buying in Chicago

I had the pleasure of visting Chicago for 3 days last week. Of course I checked out the wine scene, visiting a wine friendly restaurant and visiting the two biggest wine sellers, Binny's and the Sam's. Someone once told me you can get anything you want in Chicago... though it might cost a pretty penny. I took that mean that Chicago was big enough to have a market for everything.

So I was foolishly surprised at how good the shopping was at both Binny's and Sam's was. Both were impressive, having as good a selection and prices as anyplace I've ever been. I found bottles I can't find here in northern California where I reside, with wine growing regions both north and south of us. The bigges tlocal wine specialists retailers are the The Wine Club and K & L Wine. Among the chains, Costco, Safeway and Trader Joes, also sell a lot of wine, here.

The summary for the impatient is that I liked Binny's a bit more than Sam's and I thought Binny's prices were better, roughly $1 cheaper on $15-20 bottles. I bought quite a bit of wine at both, which were both world-class wine retailers.

Binny's

It turns out Binny's is a local chain in that they have many locations (10+) throughout the Chicago area. I went to their store on Grand in downtown, which has a forboding parking lot surrounded by a low brick wall and metal security fencing. The store itself was slighly below ground level and about twice the size of a 7-11. Not huge. But the wines were packed densely on 7-11 type shelving, so there were a good number of wines to choose from. And the prices were exemplary. I'm an Australian nut, so I spent a good 30 minutes browsing that isle. Some of the gems I found were

• Jim Barry 2005 Shiraz 2005 $15
  
• Neyer's 2005 Old Lakeville Road Syrah $27, I didn't think I'd find anymore, so this made me very happy as I bought all 3 bottles available. I took only 2 bottles home, forcing me to do checked luggage and it was this wine, the Neyer's Syrah.
• Kangarilla 2004 Zinfandel (Aus) $15, a lighter, juicy delightful raspberry-ish wine, bearing no resemblence to Calif zin.
• Tait 2005 Ballbuster $16, anybody who carries the Ballbuster is in my good list.
  
• Montes 2005 Alpha Syrah $15, my favorite widely-available wine for under $20; this equals the best price I've seen at Costco.
• George Duboeuf 2005 Regnie $10, I find the 2005 Beaujolais to be astonishingly wonderful and Matt Kramer in WS just agreed with me.
• Perrin and Fils 2004 Cote du Rhone Villages $13
• Yangarra 2005 Cadenza GSM $24

They also had a decent selection of Spanish wines and a few Portugese wines, something I don't find at the Wine Club.

Sam's Wine and Spirits

I took the red line from Binny's, from Grand/State to the North/Clyborn stop and walked the remaining 1/2 mile to Sam's. Sam's is a a huge brick building a bit northeast of downtown, this looks like a large Costco, but it's filled with just alchohol and mainly wine. At first it appears overwhelming due to the size, but the selection is just slighly more than Binny's due to much lower density shelving.

There were 8 wine distributors setup with with small tables pouring 2-5 of their wines. Naturally I hit a few of them up upon walking in. At the first pour, I found the wine of the night, the Calina 2005 (?) Carmenere from Chile at $9. A fruity, spicy with a smooth rich body, this was a very nice wine. I got a bottle, not wanting to load up too much. However, an hour later when I revisited the station and found the wine to be still that good, they had sold out, so I was glad I got the bottle when I did. Look for this!

Overall, Sam's was a very fun experience. If I were force to buy all my wines there, I would still be a happy person. Some of the wines I got were

• Babich 2006 Sauvignon Blanc $13, hard to go wrong with Babich anything
• Calina 2005(?) Carmenere $8, the wine of the night... wow
• Santa Ema 2005 Cabernet Reserve $9, I'm about to start buying Santa Ema wines like crazy again
• a bunch ofSpanish wines that Robert Parker rated 89+ points for under $13
  

The one thing that annoyed me at Sam's was a sign saying the Columbia Crest Grand Reserve Chardonnay $9 got a WS 90 point rating, which it did not. An exaggerated rating calls into question all their other quoted ratings.