Wine Shopping in Westfield

I can't believe that it took us almost a month worth of blogging to arrive at this important and most favorite topic: Wine Shopping. Today we will not be reviewing the different places where you can get wine in our town and their pros and cons: This will be a topic for another blog entry. Today, we will look at one particular Wine Store that is a bit of a hidden gem. Peterson's Wines Unlimited.

One remark before we go there. My wife and I a true vinophiles. We are not snobs, we don't really drink a lot and we don't spend fortunes on wine. But in our world a good bottle of wine is an essential ingredient for a good meal. And we are wine adventures. We like to explore new varietles, new wineries, new blends and new regions where the wine comes from. So when we move to a new place, one of the first things we do (after checking out where they have the best croissants) is to check out the wine retail landscape.

From the outside Peterson's could be mistaken as a basic "at-the-corner" liqour store, the ones that have all the mainstream brands the sell well but nothing that is special or interesting. But Peterson's is really much more than this. First off, they have a wine director: Glen. Second: Glen really knows what he is talking about. And I mean really. He is well-traveled when it comes to wine, well-read about wine and he seemingly tasted a lot. And third: The owners of Peterson's seeminlgy give Glen some freedom to explore and experiment with some unusal wines, producers and regions.
Yes, they certainly do have the mainstream type brands and even some of the "value wine". But they also have some rarities and just some, a lot. We were amazed to see a large section of German and Austrian wines. And not just Riesling. Scheurebe, Blaufraenkisch, Gruener Veltliner and even Pinot Noir from Austria. Lot's of stuff to explore. And with Glen's competent, friendly and never pushy advise and recommendations this was actually fun. We spent more than an hour at the store, bought some very interesting rare wines that we never before had and thanks to Glen we learned a lot of new facts about wines from all over the world.

Regardless if you are into wine or just an occassional drinker and regardless if you are looking for high end wine or for some reasonably priced picks, Peterson's is a cool place to shop for wine. This time we focused on Germany/Austria and South Africa. So there are some good reasons to come back to explore what they have from other regions.

Signing Off - The Westfield Blogger