Spring 2024 GO Wine Sale March 25 – April 2

The Grocery Outlet Spring 2024 Wine Sale starts in one week and runs for nine days. As usual, please look back over the last few months’ worth of your personal favorites and the What’s New page to put together a hunting list. Use replies to this post to describe what you’d like to find, what you’ve found, impressions of new wines (I hope a bunch will be showing up for the sale), and how much you’ve left where for the rest of us.

This sale, I don’t have anything I’m waiting to stock up on, so I’ll just be going to nab a few old favorites and try out anything new and interesting-looking.

Fall 2023 GO Wine Sale Nov. 1 – 7

The Fall 2023 Grocery Outlet wine sale, 20% off all wines, will be Wednesday, November 1 through Tuesday, November 7. I’ll get some Vireton Pinot Noir and Magistrate Cabernet, probably some other wines also discussed on the What’s New? page, such as Matchbook Petit Verdot or Malbec, Shale Oak KA red, Crasto Duoro Superior, and probably a number of others I’ll forget until I see them in the store(s). As usual, reply to this post with what you got where, what you saw that you left behind, what you think of new arrivals you tried out, etc. Cheers and happy hunting!

Spring 2023 Wine Sale 20% Off, April 3 – 11

The Grocery Outlet Spring 2023 Wine Sale will start Monday, April 3 and run through Tuesday, April 11. This is the first time I can recall that a biannual GO wine sale has run over one week. I hope this means more interesting wines will come in over the course of the sale, but we’ll see.

This year, I’m outside GO territory at the moment, and won’t be contributing to tasting notes. However, please do make use of this post, as usual, to describe what you have (or haven’t) found, where, how much was left, notes for new wines that appear during the sale, etc. I hope I’ll be able to get back for at least some of this long sale, but in the meantime, cheers!

Fall 2022 Wine Sale, 20% off all wine

The Grocery Outlet Fall 2022 Wine Sale will be Wednesday, November 2 through Tuesday, November 8. A few more interesting wines have started to come in to the store where I work, and I hope that’s true at everyone else’s local stores as well. Usually, I would have described some of these wines in the What’s New? section as I tasted them, but since the sale is coming up, I thought I’d just list them here.

• Pierre Sourdais 2019 Chinon “Les Rosiers,” 100% Cabernet Franc, Loire Valley, France, Jeff Wellburn Selections, 12% ABV, $6. This, I did open tonight, and it’s terrific for $6. Fuller medium-body, very smooth and supple tangy, earthy, funky red / purple cherry / plum, darker red raspberry / cactus fruit (?), something red floral, gently herbal / tannic finish. Lots of tartrate crystals in the bottle, but don’t let them bother you.
• Domaine des Grillemonts 2021 Saumur rosé, 100% Cabernet Franc, Loire Valley, France, Jeff Wellburn Selections, 13% ABV, $6.
• Domaine Audebert et fils 2021 Bourgueil rosé, 100% Cabernet Franc, Loire Valley, France, Jeff Wellburn Selections, 13% ABV, $6.
• Kenneth Volk 2013 Touriga Nacional, Pomar Junction Vineyard, Paso Robles, CA, $6.
• Topography 2015 red blend, Napa Valley, CA, cellared and bottled by Burgess Cellars, $20. Screw cap.

So, anyway, please as usual use comments here to list what you’re looking forward to getting during the sale, what you’re finding where, how new stuff tastes, etc. Thanks and cheers!

Spring 2022 Wine Sale 20% Off All Wine

The Grocery Outlet Spring 2022 wine sale will run from Wednesday, April 6, through Tuesday, April 12. Any and all wine will be 20% off displayed prices, with the discount taken automatically at the register. Since I currently don’t write extended posts, the conversation has moved to the What’s New? page. Please go there and read back through comments on the various wines we’ve been discussing for the last few to several months. Please use this page, as usual, to mention what you’d like to get, what you found where, how much you left behind, what else you saw while you were there, etc. Myself, I am still deciding what to pick up, and there are plenty of new wines to try that have been coming in for the sale.

These last couple years, my announcements of sales have also mentioned something about the Covid epidemic. My feeling these days is that we should still be trying to avoid catching and spreading this disease. As more data become available on its long-term cardiovascular, neurological, diabetes, and mental health effects, and since so far neither vaccination nor infection seems to provide very good long-term immunity, I personally want to catch it (and likely spread it to my family) as few times in my life as possible. Please take of yourself and those around you while snagging your favorite wines. Cheers!

Fall 2021 Wine Sale 20% Off

The Grocery Outlet fall wine sale this year will be from Wednesday, November 3, through Tuesday, November 9. In contrast to some previous sales, I’m seeing a number of promising-looking new wines show up to make this sale more interesting. What interests others may not interest you, and vice versa, but please take a look at the conversation in What’s New? to see what has been discussed lately.

Please use comments below to describe what you’d like to get, what you got where, how much was left, etc. Myself, I’m planning to get at least the following: 3 Sunce Pinot Noirs, a couple of the Moillard rosés, another True Myth Chardonnay, and a Mas Meyrac Syrah and a Boom Boom! Syrah to mix together for fun. Thanks and happy hunting!

Spring 2021 Wine Sale 20% Off

The Spring 2021 Wine Sale will be Wednesday, April 7 through Tuesday, April 13, when any and all wine, but not beer or liquor, will be 20% off. Please use comments here to say what you’re finding of interest, and where. After the sale, the conversation will probably mostly go back to the What’s New page. In fact, do scan the conversation there to see what wines folks have been liking recently.

Myself, I usually get about a case for myself of recent favorites that I want to drink over the next few months or years, but this time I’m so far planning to get just a couple of the Vienot 2017 Beaujolais-Villages ($7 regular price). GO lately has had good values in interesting every day wines, but not a whole lot that I’d want to stock up on to age for another 6 months to three years. I expect that my need for tasty every day wines will be met largely by new arrivals in the months to come.

I’m relieved that, so far, no one at my store has gotten sick from COVID-19. However, the battle is hardly over, between increasing vaccinations and now-increasing cases in many areas fueled by the more contagious and lethal variants (mutations from the original Sars-Cov-2 strain). Even if you are fully vaccinated (as I am), when in stores, please continue (as I do) to use masks that make a good seal around your mouth and nose, and to keep interactions as brief and distanced as feasible. This should be the norm in public indoor spaces until the vaccination rate is much higher. In my previous sale post, I linked to a couple articles by Zeynep Tufekci, who has been one of my most important guides during the pandemic, and who has been consistently right, early. Let me end with her latest:

The Fourth Surge Is Upon Us. This Time, It’s Different.

A deadlier and more transmissible variant has taken root, but now we have the tools to stop it if we want.

Fall 2020 Wine Sale, 20% off all wine

The Spring 2020 wine sale was canceled due to caution around the corona virus pandemic, but the show will go on for the Fall sale from Wednesday, November 4 through Tuesday, November 10: 20% off any and all wine.  Then, sorry, it’s back to GO’s regular exorbitant wine prices.

That said, I exhort and plead with everyone to prioritize corona virus safety over getting that last case of your favorite wine.  My understanding is that it is primarily spread through small droplets from the mouth small enough to float and linger in the air for a long time, that are then inhaled through and bind to receptors in the nasal / sinus tissue.   The statistic I read from a study in Italy is that “70% of people under 70 have no symptoms,” but are quite capable of spreading it if infected, and symptoms and mortality rise rapidly with age after that.  So wear a mask with a good seal around your mouth (to protect others, especially family) and nose (to protect yourself, and also family).  The more we get cases down, the sooner we can re-open schools, businesses, etc.  But also, don’t panic.  If everyone is well masked and talking calmly, your brief encounters in a grocery store are unlikely to spread this virus.  For example, no one at the store where I work has gotten sick (fingers crossed).

Sorry to keep going on about this, but here are two popular articles that contain most of the basis for my understanding:

We Need to Talk About Ventilation
How is it that six months into a respiratory pandemic, we are still doing so little to mitigate airborne transmission?

This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic

And here is an article written by someone who thought it was no big deal but wound up spreading it among his family:
https://washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/10/coronavirus-denier-sick-spreader

Ok, let’s get back to wine.  Please use comments here to write about what you’re scoping out, looking for more of, where you found it, and what you would up getting and liking or not liking.  After the sale, the discussion will probably mostly return to the “What’s New?” comments.  Thank you!!!

Spring 2020 Wine Sale Postponed

Greetings, everyone!  Because of the rush on food preceding the Novel Corona Virus shutdown, the Spring 2020 20% off wine sale has been postponed indefinitely for now.  Certainly, in my store, most of the shelves were pretty empty. Meat, eggs, rice, beans, and other staples, and even many not-so-staples, were completely wiped out.  At regular rates of deliveries and customer purchases, it will take at least a month to re-stock the store.  I expect the wine sale will happen some time after that.

Also, now that I’m back at work, I’m too busy to post much.  What’s left of the discussion has moved to comments on What’s New?  Thanks.

A Few Current Wines

I posted new reviews while I was off work for a while, but now that I’m back, finding the time to post reviews in my usual thorough style is much more challenging.  I thought I’d switch instead to brief comments here on what I’ve liked lately.  (I probably won’t say much about wines I didn’t like.)  Let’s see how it goes.

Domain Sumeire 2017 Côtes de Provence rosé, $4. Light, smooth, crisp.  Delicious and went down like water during the recent heat wave.

Pavi 2013 Dolcetto, Napa Valley, $7.  At first, this wine didn’t seem like much: thin and acid.  However, after being decanted for 2.5 hours, the wine filled out in flavor and complexity, becoming dark-fruited, even sweet-tasting, with more oak than the Italians use.

Infinito 2014 Malbec, Mendoza, Argentina, $10.  The first day, it aired to be pretty tasty after a couple hours, but still a bit reserved and acid.  The saved bottle was delicious, with full, ripe, dark blue / black fruit.  Maybe if it had been sitting at home for a couple weeks to get over shock of transit to the store, it would be good on the first day after a couple hours.