Total Wine going after BevMo with cheap rum

I was in the local Total Wine Tuesday to restock. They must be going after BevMo. They had the standard Cruzan rums for $7.99 a 750 ml.regular price. They also had Ron Zacapa for $31.99 and Zaya for $23.99. I figured I'd stock up be for they came to their senses.

[ Edited by: tuna tiki 2011-03-05 15:18 ]

I was just looking to get some Zaya so I could take a crack at some of Kahuna Kevin's cocktails.

This is music to my ears. Thanks for the tip!

On 2011-03-03 16:17, MauiRose wrote:
I was just looking to get some Zaya so I could take a crack at some of Kahuna Kevin's cocktails.

This is music to my ears. Thanks for the tip!

Grab at least 2-3 bottles of Zaya at that price! EXCELLENT value for the quality of rum you're getting, and I use it fairly regularly including recipes for Volume 2. As much as I love Zacapa, I still think Zaya is my go to no-brainer instant satisfaction rum. I even joke to my wife about wearing it as a cologne.

[ Edited by: Kahuna Kevin 2011-03-05 17:47 ]

Total Wine. I thought about starting a thread about liquor store gripes... I hope this post gets indexed by search engines, and that a Total Wine marketing person reads it. Don't worry, this isn't really bad, so keep reading.

Total Wine sends out coupons during some of the holidays. Today they emailed me coupons -- for wine and beer purchases only. I wish Total Wine would learn to pay more attention to us spirits and cocktail drinkers. We spend a lot of money on our quirky individual tastes, and I can never understand why they reward beer and wine drinkers but not their spirits and mixers drinkers. Another confirmation of my beef with Total Wine is that their selection of bitters is horridly limited for such a large retailer. I often find myself having to drive to other smaller spirits handlers, or mail-ordering bitters and other specialty items. Total Wine really seems to be doing very little to educate, cultivate, and otherwise provide more value to their customers who are into cocktails. To me this is a missed market development opportunity.

On 2015-12-10 10:04, AceExplorer wrote:
Total Wine sends out coupons during some of the holidays. Today they emailed me coupons -- for wine and beer purchases only. I wish Total Wine would learn to pay more attention to us spirits and cocktail drinkers. We spend a lot of money on our quirky individual tastes, and I can never understand why they reward beer and wine drinkers but not their spirits and mixers drinkers.

I was just thinking the same thing this morning.

Good to know that I'm not the only one then. My city needs another big beer/wine/spirits merchant. I'm sure BevMo isn't perfect, but it would be great if they came to my BIGGEST CITY IN FLORIDA, hint, hint...

Oh, and to be clear, I have filled out a "personal profile" for my email address with Total Wine, and my profile is clearly distilled spirits-centric. Maybe its a volume problem where I'm only one of a small handful of spirits drinkers? That's not likely - we have a good selection of well-established craft cocktail bars here, and I'm not the only one with a home bar, beakers, and a lab coat.

What kind of bitters are you looking for? The Total Wine I go to in Huntington Beach carries Fee Brothers, Bittercube, Bittermilk, Stirrings, Angostura, Scrappy's, Underberg, Woodford Reserve and Peychaud bitters.

I was really excited a few months ago when Total Wine opened their first store in Austin. I had been to locations in Jacksonville and Dallas that both impressed me. We have two major liquor store chains here, Twin and Spec's. Most Twin stores are small neighborhood shops with little more to offer than Bacardi, Malibu and Capt Morgan but they have a couple larger stores with some surprises (I recently said the secret word to procure a bottle of Stiggins they had hidden in the back). They are typically significantly more expensive than Spec's though, who used to be my one stop shop but over the past several months essentials like BG syrups, Coruba, Clement and other items in regular rotation in my bar started disappearing off their shelves. So I was hoping Total Wine would fill the gaps so I wouldn't have to keep shopping multiple stores. Gotta say I was really disappointed with the rum selection and mixers at the new Total Wine and their prices were spot on to Spec's so I really don't have a need to go there since it's way south and Spec's are pretty much everywhere. In a city like Austin it's amazing to me we don't have better liquor store options or atleast a flagship store from one of the chains.

On 2015-12-10 10:32, tikilongbeach wrote:
What kind of bitters are you looking for? The Total Wine I go to in Huntington Beach carries Fee Brothers, Bittercube, Bittermilk, Stirrings, Angostura, Scrappy's, Underberg, Woodford Reserve and Peychaud bitters.

tlb -- My local Total Wine carries a small selection of bitters -- Angostura, Peychaud's, and a few others which are most popular and very common. What they don't carry - and exactly what I'm looking for more often now - are some of the more unusual and specialty bitters like chocolate, Elemakule, black walnut, Regan's, and a lot more of the Fee Brothers product line. Next time I'm there I'll take a picture of what I consider their very sparse selection.

Mike -- I know what you mean, and it sounds like you have more selection than we do. One of our craft cocktail bars does sell liquors and bitters, however they have been letting their specialty stuff run very low or completely out, and they haven't followed up on promised re-orders. I'm not sure what that means, it could be that folks just haven't been buying enough of these specialty items, and I certainly understand that. There may be a dilemma for these bars ---- selling cocktails at their bars versus selling supplies and educating folks to make them at home. For the liquor stores, however, they seem entrenched in selling the low-end high-margin stuff at the expense of those of us who have become more advanced cocktailians.

the Total Wine in Tampa has tons of bitters. (except for Fee Bros, which i've almost never found in a retail shop). For a long time it was the only place around where i could find El Dorado products, and is still pretty much the only place around that carries any rhums agricole.

i've never seen any spirits coupons from them, but who does offer them? not ABC to my knowledge, nor any of the grocery liquor stores. maybe its against FLA industry regs to offer coupons for booze?? (ABC used to give you a %off coupon as a reward, but now its just 2 bucks).

something i find odd at Total Wine-- they carry several Senor Curacao of Curacao products, but not the one i'm interested-- the Curacao!!

Since I literally live a block away from Hi Time Liquor (Good thing I am not an alcoholic!)
please allow me to sprinkle some salt & a bit of fresh lime juice into your wounds.

Yes I am gloating right now.........still gloating.......this may last awhile. :D

thePorpoise - you may be on to something, that spirits discount coupons may not be allowed in Floriduh. I'll look into it further and see what I can find. Also, I'm seeing in this thread that there may be HUGE variation from store-to-store with regard to what bitters they stock. My local store, for whatever reason, is very sparsely stocked with more than the most popular and basic bitters. They used to carry some of the Stirrings products, but even those are no longer around. I'll talk to someone at the front desk next time I'm there and see what I can find out.

ATP - you dog, so lucky to live close to Hi Times! :drink:

Ace, here's the bitters selection at the second Total Wine store that just opened in Austin. Not too shabby.

This store seems a bit better than the other one in Austin. They had most of what I was looking for rum wise but mixers left something to be desired. Don't know why it's so hard to get BG products into chain liquor stores. We have a super market that carries the passion fruit and Orgeat.

Update --- I was at my local Total Wine earlier this week and was surprised to see their selection of bitters (and flavored simple syrups) had increased dramatically over the past month. I snapped photos of the whole section for my records the next time I'm looking for more bitters. I'm tired of mail ordering ALL the bitters I need. (Does anyone want me to post the pics here? The pics include prices as of 1/5)

Also, my local specialty bar "Grape And Grain Exchange" also stepped up their game and now also carries many of the bitters I have been mail ordering. I've been asking them to restock for about a year, and finally they were able to do it. As a small craft and high-end craft liquors business, I'm sure it's not fun for them to buy and stock a bunch of stuff which doesn't move very fast, so I 'm really thankful that they did. I bought a bottle of rum while I was there, so am trying to help the local business out.