As a visitor to the city I wanted to find a store with a great selection of wine. When visiting Austin Liquors I found an employee who had no clue about wine and seemed far more interested in her magazine than answering my questions. There was initially an issue with the posted fact that they do NOT accept out of state ID's. However, after a few minutes with a younger man talking to him that was cleared up. However, the selection is a sea of mass-market wines. Their selection of German wines was horrid. Just across town at O'Hara's there was a vertical selection of JJ Prum wines. Here they had ONE German wine that was QmP. If you are looking for a good selection of ""special"" or small production wines...this is NOT the store to go to. We have better slections up here in Maine...it was a waste of my time. \r
\r
If the store is looking to improve their selections they may want to focus on offering a wider range of selections in wines. With over 30 different Pinot Noirs there I was very dissapointed to only see 4 or 5 from Oregon and all of them were in the lower pricing tier (Firesteed, Elk Cove, Montinore, ect). Perhaps this store needs a serious wine manager/buyer, one who could step up the selection quality and slim down the sea of marginal wines they offer...
Pros: variety of low level wines, parking,
Cons: Storage temperature, informed staff, limitations to out of state clients
more