Published by Jeremy.
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We always like to find great wine stores when we travel to see what life could be like if we didn't live in the lovely controlled state of Pennsylvania.
When we made a weekend trip to New York City, we knew what store we had to check out- Astor Wine & Spirits.
This one had a reputation as one of the finest wine stores in New York, and we had even ordered deliveries from them from time to time. So as (admittedly infrequent) customers, we knew this would be a pilgrimage-style spot for us.
As much as we liked the wine selection here, the spirits were also just as, if not more, impressive!
Astor Wine & Spirits is a Must in NYC
Astor Wine & Spirits is located just a short walk away from Astor Place, is located in a gorgeous building from the 1800s, and boasts a collection of over 5,000 wines and spirits.
On our first visit to the store, we had to admit we were blown away by just how large the space was. Shops in New York City can be notoriously small at times, but this store was anything but. Between browsing all the wines, tasting any wines and spirits they may be sampling (at select hours), and strategically shopping, we spent well over an hour in the store simply soaking it all in.
Even better? This one is typically open seven days a week, as early as 9 am (a bit later on Sundays), and made for a great stop for us on Monday morning before flying home.
As with most stores, we always like to take a look at the variety of wines they have amongst all the categories as well as within any given category, and Astor Wine hits both quite well here. Wines are organized by region, and most of the major (and minor) wine-producing regions have a decent selection across an entire range of styles and prices. Burgundy and Rhone have excellent representation just as much as Australia, the Finger Lakes, and Canada. They even had a great wall of clearance bottles with decent discounts, too!
So not only do they have a wide breadth of wines, their depth is also quite impressive as well.
We saw many new-to-us producers of quality that we've never seen in stores anywhere, as well as rare bottles from wineries we have visited abroad and have never actually seen state-side apart from major wine shops like Wine.com. In fact, despite being in NYC, we were impressed that many bottles of wine were actually cheaper than we could get on Wine.com- often on the order of $2-$5 per bottle, depending on how expensive it is (more of a disparity the higher the price, naturally).
Although we wish we could've bought more bottles of wine to bring home with us, it was the spirits selection that really caught our interest here.
- If you are planning to shop, it is worth noting that Astor Wine has a will-call pick-up section (generally three hours required) and has free delivery in New York state with varying minimum order value. Great options for those who want to shop online!
Don't Overlook the Spirits
Now, I know what you're thinking, this is a wine blog. But we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about just how good the spirit selection is here. Take everything we said about the wine and apply it to the spirits at this shop.
A ton of great whiskeys and bourbon? Yep. Rare releases, barrel picks, and other specialty bottles? Absolutely. A massive selection of liqueurs and imports we never knew existed? You better believe it. They even had a tasting counter that was open during our visit sharing some amaro we had never heard of before.
It is because of this that we actually kept almost all of our shopping to spirits because we simply found far too many internationally-produced bottles we've been searching for that we cannot find, well, anywhere!
Truly, our only regret here was that we had only checked one suitcase, so we were inherently limited on the number of bottles we could buy during our visit. Thankfully, we also know that Astor Wine & Spirits can ship to us, which we have to admit is the next best thing.
But whether you are visiting for wine, spirits, sake, or something else entirely, make this one a must-stop when in New York City. This store is hard to beat!
Astor Wine & Spirits is located at 399 Lafayette Street in New York City.
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