I am assembling a tasting flight of Shiraz wines.

[randomness]

bedfull_o_books prefers Shirazs. I figured it'd be fun to offer her a tasting flight of them. (There was no particular occasion for this, but I suppose we could break them open for her birthday.)

Anyway, I'm doing this by the simple expedient of buying piccolo bottles (187mL, a quarter of a regular 750mL bottle) of various Shiraz wines. This is one and a half regulation UK mini-glasses of 125mL each, or a bit more than what the Americans and Canadians consider a standard glass of wine (5 oz and 150mL, respectively).

There are some fun advantages to this: the bottles are small and cute--always a consideration with bedfull_o_books--and what's more a large variety of wines can be assembled for a very reasonable price. Most of the wines which are available in piccolo bottles are rather cheap wines, but that's not a problem; I'm just having fun with the idea of assembling a tasting flight.

The only difficulties I've found so far are that a) this packaging tends to be hard to find and is often relegated to the "wine cooler"/box wine section when a store carries it at all and b) when one can find these bottles, they're generally sold in four-packs, which kind of defeats the purpose, at least for what I'm doing. Supermarkets, where this packaging is easier to find than in actual wine shops, often won't break up four-packs.

This evening, for example, I found a single bottle of Black Swan Shiraz, one of a few stray bottles in a display of four-packs, and Foodmaster wouldn't sell it to me. They lost a sale but I failed to find the wine elsewhere before closing time. So we both lost.

I suppose I could mail order but the shipping gets truly silly on individual piccolo bottles. I've been content to make the scavenger hunt a part of the process.

Thus far I've found shirazes from Fisheye Winery (California), Alice White (Australia), and Lindemans (Australia). (Well, I did find the Black Swan, which is also Australian, but I couldn't buy it.) All of them really quite inexpensive.

I'll keep looking. I have a list of fifteen wines, some Shiraz/Syrah blends with other varietals. If I find them all I'll be quite surprised, but it'll be a fun search.

If you know of any places that sell wines in these piccolo bottles and are willing to sell individual bottles out of their four-packs, I'll be glad if you let me know!

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Success! Went to Supreme Liquors and picked another one up just now.

Thanks again for the pointer!

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a fun tasting, and it's so weird that the Foodmaster wouldn't sell you that bottle. What'll they do, drink it themselves?

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It was very strange. When I said, it's one of the ones that's loose in the display (there were actually a few bottles loose) they said, "Oh, people steal them," as if that were an explanation. Then they took it and wouldn't even let me put it back in the display. Maybe you're right. :)

It was one of those situations where the barcode wasn't in the system, and the staff on duty had no instructions to make any decisions in that situation. Happens often, and it's probably true that management would rather lose a few sales rather than have workers be empowered to do anything unusual.

Later that day at Stop and Shop I simply scanned a single bottle for a price check, found the PLU wasn't in the system, and didn't even bother trying to check it out (mainly because I'd pulled the bottle for a four-pack myself, that time). There will be other places which can actually sell the things, and I'd much rather buy from a place which has actually thought about what happens if someone tries to buy an individual bottle. Liquor stores generally have more clue here: if they stock them at all they'll very likely sell them to you.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

What, bedfull_o_books likes small cute things? I HAD NO IDEA.

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

*snerk*

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

*bows*

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

Have you considered enlisting Seth Hill?

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's funny, because that never even occurred to me.

Now that you mention it, though, I think these bottles are way too down-market: even middle-brow wine shops don't carry these four-packs, and I've ended up going to warehouse liquor places to find them rather than wine shops.

If I get stuck I may mention it the next time I see him. Thanks for the suggestion!

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

It's too bad the piccolo bottles aren't more common. It would be great for those of us who cook with wine but cannot drink it.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, that's where I got the idea. bedfull_o_books used to buy a four-pack and keep it in the kitchen for cooking. You open one each time you need to cook with wine. Then you don't have to worry about wasting the rest of a large bottle.