Is cheap ever chic? If so, this would be the season. Alcohol has long been fairly recession-proof (who doesn’t need strong drink in hard times?), but not this go-around. Wineries, stores, restaurants... they’re all feeling the pinch.
And so, most likely, are you. But if you’re interested in keeping that pinch at a fun, foreplay-ish level, rather than affixing industrial-strength C-clamps to your unmentionables, it’s time to make the acquaintance of the
close-out bin: the Filene’s Basement of wine retail. Yes, sometimes it’s a dumping ground for the lousiest of the lousy, but not always. And these days, with consumers’ per-bottle spending plummeting, stores need to unload some of their pricy-but-stationary inventory to make room for lower-end stuff. The result? Good wines at giveaway prices.
Or, one can take the concept and turn it into an entire store, as they’ve done at
Bin Ends (236 Wood Road, Braintree, 781.817.1212,
www.binendswine.com). Which makes us wonder: what do they do with close-out wine? Pay people to take it out of the store?
For more on wine, check out Thor’s blog at
www.stuffboston.com.
