Convive is a very cool tiny wine shop in the East Village, so you would be supporting small business, albeit not small local business.
I’m somewhat tempted by the $250 mixed case, since it works out to about $20 a bottle.
P.S. I just pulled the plug and ordered the case, although it was a whopping $64.82 to ship FedEx ground (which is not ideal, even pre-summer since the wine can “cook” on the FedEx truck - but no way was I paying for air delivery). I’ll hope for the best – even with the delivery fee that only works out to $26 a bottle, and I thought it was a well-curated selection.
Sounds like a good deal, but the style of wine making that this collection represents doesn’t really fall under the topic of conversation in this discussion thread, right?
Few if any wines are shipped by air. They come in containers.
Calculating the total carbon footprint of a product can be complicated, e.g. New Zealand apples shipped to England have a much lower total than domestic British apples.
Actually most of the wines on the list are biodynamic or organic from small productions, so to me that is “natural” wine. One of the California wines on the list is both organic, small production, only partially filtered and 13% alcohol (which is almost unheard of for a California wine). So that wine is “natural” enough for me - just hope it doesn’t arrive from New York cooked. If there is a wine I want on the East Coast that I can’t find in California (for instance the best small production French Viognier is impossible to find in California), I usually have it sent FedEx air, but here that was just too cost prohibitive.
I think I’ve liked all the Dirty & Rowdy wines I’ve had. It seems kind of goofy to have California wine shipped to California from New York, but I think the Unfamiliar is sold out here.
I’m sure I could have found the Dirty & Rowdy in California and paid much less for shipping. What I liked about the Convive offer, however, especially in these days where I feel I spend half my days online looking for toilet paper (and I’m still hunting Kleenex) and other necessities, both for myself and for relatives and neighbors, was just to get a “curated” case of wine from different producers rather than searching out individual websites to look for wines I thought I might enjoy and then curating my own case. I used to like to do that in prior times, but not when I have to spend hours on line looking for paper goods or going out to stores trying to find paper goods and other necessities. Speaking of which – I have a cold (I’m almost certain it’s a cold and not COVID) and I’m wondering how in the world I got it unless it was from delivery, restaurant pick-up or the one time I ventured to the supermarket pharmacy.
Next time, I’m 100% positive if you called Lou at Lou, or Jill at Domaine (and probably the guys at Stanley’s Wet Goods, they seem to have good taste too) they would happily put together a curated case for you at $20 avg a bottle.
Good idea. I agree with you @Omotesando I’d much prefer somebody send me a curated case of wines within a certain price range. Whenever I go to restaurants I generally ask the somm to pick a bottle to match what we’re eating within a price range.
I asked a retailer to put together three cases of under-$20 wines, and he instead gave me three cases of wines that averaged $20, which was considerably less helpful in my quest to find some under-$20 wines to buy by the case.
Quick update: the Domaine site is active again if you want to browse. They’re adding new wines a couple days per week and there are some good affordable options right now. https://domainela.com/
I’ve ordered from Henry’s in the past and had a positive experience. Free shipping over $300 and no tax for out of state.
Last time I ordered a mixed case from Psychic they came in under budget - a solid option if you’re able to pick up.
