We know what it’s like to not be able to leave the house when you finally make it home after a long day at work. We also know what it’s like to buy so much wine that you cannot carry it home yourself. Never fear: we deliver! Our standard delivery hours and area can be found below. For information on deliveries outside of these paramaters, including to Manhattan, please call the store.

Monday – Thursday: 5-9:30
Friday: 5-10:30
Saturday: 12-10:30
Sunday: 3-8

Vine Wine is pleased to announce the first ever* Pet-Nat Week. While we all love Riesling, we believe that there is enough room in summer to celebrate more than one wine. For six days, we’ll share our love of petillant naturel through a series of tastings and events.

Pet-Nat is a nickname for petillant naturel, a method of producing sparkling wine by bottling the wine during the the primary, alcoholic fermentation to capture the carbon dioxide that is naturally released. This differs from wines like Champagne that undergo a second, bubble-producing fermentation. Pet-Nats are made using only the sugar of the grapes and native yeasts, making them a pure reflection of their regions and varieties. But, most important for us, they just taste great, varying from dry and cider-y to happy, alcoholic raspberry soda.

To celebrate this summery bubbly, Vine Wine is hosting a week of complimentary in-store tastings highlighting a range of Pet-Nats.

Tasting Schedule

Monday, June 25, 6-9pm
David Bowler Wine

Tuesday, June 26, 6-9pm
Jenny and Francois Selections

Wednesday, June 27, 6-9pm
Savio Soares Selections

Thursday, June 28, 6-9pm
Louis/Dressner Selections

Friday, June 29, 6-9pm
T. Edward Wines

Saturday, June 30, 3-6pm
Vine Wine will say goodbye to this glorious week with a day drinking party featuring products from the Meat Hook and bubbles from the French region of Bugey.

* Well, we’re pretty sure, but this is not a verified statement.

I read this article today on Slate and was moved to anger. I love cheap wine, especially if it is delicious and doesn’t provoke a mind numbing hangover, as much as the next person and my owning a wine store doesn’t change this fact. Even with the entire store to choose from there are days when all I want is an easy drinking red that won’t challenge me but will be truly enjoyable. I wish I could stock my store with hundreds of wines for less than $10 but as it turns out this is only possible if you are willing to sell mass produced wines. I too am disgusted by the salesperson who steers you towards a $30 bottle when a $10 bottle of Cabernet would suffice, and I am still slightly intimidated by the salesperson who suggests three wines that are all in the $20 plus price range when I really just want a glass of wine not an education. But I refuse to fill my store with wines based on price alone.

Wine is an agricultural product and just like carrots, milk, or meat it costs money to grow grapes, especially if you are interested in growing your grapes organically or even sustainably. To paraphrase Michael Pollan; if you are concerned about the environment, or the workers health, or your own, you should be drinking wine made by winemakers not corporations. When you see a $4 bottle of wine at Trader Joe’s or Costco, think about it for a minute. Is it really possible to grow grapes, ferment them, bottle them – often in glass bottles with corks – ship them to various parts of the world, and then have them retail for $4? Yes, if you are spraying your vines with chemicals, yes if you are underpaying your vineyard workers, and yes if you are unconcerned about the end product and only concerned about your bottom line. Wine is a luxury item, as much as I hate to remind you of that fact, and as such I think you should be interested in buying the best possible luxury item. We buy organic cotton t-shirts, organic chocolate bars, locally grown apples and meat with a verifiable chain of production, not to mention Heritage Turkeys and glass baby bottles, so why should you buy crap mass produced wine? So, yes you are often shown bottles of wine that are almost $15 when you are shopping at Vine, and yes I don’t blame you if you cannot stomach spending more than $8 per bottle , if I am invited to your house for dinner I will in no way judge you. Instead I will either bring my own wine to share with you, or abstain from drinking any of yours.

I’m beginning to believe that it will take me 40 years — at least — to truly learn wine, and since I’ve only been drinking wine seriously for about 20 years, I have some time left, and some serious work to do. The good thing about owning a wine store, though, is that part of my job is learning.

It may sound odd, but I know very little about wine. I’ve never referred to myself as a “somm”; I’m still not convinced that a $40 Chablis is better than a $14 Aligote; I love to drink a chilled bottle of zinfandel and as an apertif (and I remember when it used to be called red zinfandel, back when white zinfandel was still popular).

The truth is that I opened a wine store because I was a frustrated new parent that wanted so badly to buy a bottle of wine that I enjoyed drinking. I knew enough about wine to know there was something better out there than the Rosemont Shiraz being sold at the store on my corner. And whatever that something better was, I wanted it.

True to form, I decided to learn on the job — I opened a wine store in Long Island City on a dark and mostly desolate stretch of Jackson Avenue that I was convinced would one day be a great boulevard (it still hasn’t quite made it). So you can only imagine my fear/irritation/surprise when an older man in spandex shorts and clip-on bike shoes came in one evening and began a barrage of questions about the inventory, who I was and what I was doing. I felt simultaneously put on the spot and ready to call the cops until he finally admitted that he was a wine importer and that he wanted to sell me some wine. A perfect, sweaty, uncomfortable introduction to Joe Dressner. (Not that Joe sold the wine — luckily he had young showered sales reps to do that.)

Apparently I was on Joe’s route from work to home and he biked past the neon blinking VINE sign (thank you to Sean Krainik of redandwhitewines.com for pushing me to get it) enough times to want to check me out. For a while, Joe took to stopping in and chatting on his way home for a few minutes and he did in fact drag in one of his sales reps. And he didn’t care how unlikely it was that I would ever sell more than a case of his Rucche. His book is full of quirky wines that are often very difficult to sell. But the reason you buy his wines is that you like them because they’re full of life. It’s like the difference between eggs from a farmer’s market and eggs at C Town. Joe liked what I was doing. And I knew I’d met a kindred spirit who cared more about your expression as you tasted a wine than what you said about it.

I could tell myriad of other Joe stories, including the time when I showed up at a Louis/Dressner tasting with my then-4-year-old (who had been bribed with a My Little Pony castle to come with me). I had forgotten to RSVP and was very nearly turned away because I didn’t have a business card, until Joe swooped in and, with his most welcoming side, showed me in and right to a bottle of red that he liked — and that I liked too. (Meanwhile, my daughter played happily in the corner of the room for the next hour while I power tasted.) Months later, Joe and I had a very public accidental-on-purpose falling out and I stopped carrying his wines for years. When I moved the store to Brooklyn, however, I called him. We talked about the ridiculousness of it all and his much-missed wines made their way back into Vine.

What makes me saddest when I think about Joe’s passing is that he knew everything about wine, but more importantly he loved wine. And in a weird way, there are moments when I taste a Dressner wine and I get the feeling that I’m understanding it — and loving it — in the same way that Joe tasted and understood and loved wine. It’s not because of vast knowledge or experience — it’s because the wine is delicious in the glass. You can ascribe any of the words that people love — natural, biodynamic, etc. — to why those wines are so good; the real reason is that they are damn good to drink. Joe, wherever you ended up, I hope the wine is delicious and inspiring. Thank you for believing in me and my tiny shop in LIC.