Impersonal, albeit cute, shop on Broadway offering mostly natural wines, many of which boasting…read morethose trendy cartoonish labels that are all the rage these days. (Don't get me wrong, I love wineries partnering with visual artists; the appearance of these bottles attracted me to this store in the first place.)
I wanted to like this shop more than I did, but I found it to be just okay. I was one of two customers mulling about. The front door has an intimidating message left over from peak covid times that demands everyone wear a mask and not use cash, and it caps the capacity to 8 or thereabouts. (Can't quite remember the number.) Antiquated as it is, a peek through the window will confirm not even the staff wear masks these days, though I'm not sure if they've gone back to accepting cash.
I will preface this by saying, frankly, I know nothing about wine. I spent a very long amount of time just staring at the labels and trying to find a name or category that seemed remotely familiar based on my limited experience. Normally, in a more traditional type of shop, locating a reliable cabernet would be a breeze, but in this place, most of the reds I saw seemed to be blends, and I had a negative connotation in my head about blends for whatever reason, so I shifted to the whites shelf.
As the other gentleman who had been perusing the shop before me had, by this time, checked out and went on his way, one would think the sole employee of the small establishment might glance up from his phone and say hi or ask if I was looking for something particular, but no, of course, they never ask when you want them to, and I did not want to be rude and interrupt whatever riveting activity found him so engaged. Instead, I turned to Google and, more importantly, Vivino to get an opinion, background, or any kind of information, however vague, regarding the selection before me.
Short story long, although Vivino has not steered me wrong previously, there is a first time for everything, and the inexpensive "four-star" bottle I picked out (I wish I could remember the name, but memory fails me) turned out to be no good. I'm not particularly picky either, so this does not happen often.
As someone else mentioned, in addition, at checkout, the register has the audacity to prompt you to tip. This might have made sense if the attendant had paid any attention at all.
