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| Savings on these 3 items alone pay for our Costco membership |
I'm writing this post as a reference for friends and acquaintances who've asked for recommendations on where to find good food, wine and spirits here.
My choices reflect very specific tastes forged by three decades as a professional taster of coffee and tea and a couple of decades since then honing the skills required to make the most of "champagne tastes/beer budget" as an early escapee from the corporate world living on a very modest income. Tasting widely and broadly, keeping good notes, reading a ton of books, subscribing to independent wine journals early on and checking in with peers and category experts outside my range of expertise are old habits by now - which mostly means I'm more acutely aware of the vastness of what I don't know as time moves on.
As I hope it's needless to say, as a relative newcomers to Tucson with fairly narrow interests and a limited budget these suggestions cover only a small percentage of the many amazing things to be found here.
Wine
I've also been lucky to spend extended time in France and Italy, and early on in that process learned that "wine of the region with food of the region" is a principle to be respected. Italy and France, along with Spain and Germany of course, have had many centuries to determine which grapes are optimal to express the potential of particular soils and vineyards, as well as taking for granted that wine is food, should be made to complement not overwhelm it, and needs to be evaluated in conjunction with it.
I define "high-value" wines for everyday drinking as being versatile, food-friendly wines in the $15 and under (ideally well under) range. You can give anyone a $50 or $100 bill and assign them the task of bringing back a truly great wine from their local merchant but my obsession has been finding 90+ point wines with "typicitė" and verve for $10-12 a bottle and often even less. With current inflation and supply chain problems those needle-in-the-haystack bottles are getting harder to find, but it can still be done. And if you're willing to spend a few dollars more there are tons of choices, even here in Tucson, which despite its geographical proximity to California has such a dismal retail wine scene that you'd think you'd moved to a small town in the Midwest.
France, Italy and Spain (and nowadays Portugal) are far and away the best places to find the above-mentioned high-value (what the French call rapport qualité:prix) wines, along with a few less interesting (because they're made from stodgy Bordeaux grape varietals) wines from South America and, much more rarely, the U.S.
While American wines have made great strides over the year and there are many producers of world-class Cabernets, Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays at the top end of the market, the country produces very few outstanding wines in the $10-15 range. Some of this has to do with marketing wine by varietal and choosing the most boring, food-unfriendly ones (Cabernet and Chardonnay). Plus wine is just not the everyday-with-lunch-and-dinner staple that it has historically been in Europe; wine (and for that matter cheese) are made and priced for special occasion consumption only. You can easily get a $100-150 California Cabernet or Pinot Noir that competes in the glass with French wines selling for 2-3 times those prices but below $20 things get pretty dismal in a hurry, while the $10-12 a bottle stuff is mostly industrial plonk that's closer to dreadful Walgreens wines like Yellow Tail or Stella Rosa than anything you can get for that price from Europe.
Learning the basics
Reading Hugh Johnson's World Atlas of Wine is a great place to get oriented to wine in general. Adventures on the Wine Route by Kermit Lynch is a wonderful book to read at some point to get a vivid, visceral sense of the work that goes into making great wine. And there are many, many other great books, as well as video series such as Jancis Robinson's wine course and feature films like Mondovino that are wonderful.
Critics and ratings
There are specialist critics (e.g. who write only about Burgundy, or Italian wines) who are fantastic but at retail you're most likely to see ratings from the following critics and magazines, which I'll cite in roughly descending order of credibility and accuracy: Decanter, Jeb Dunnick, Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, James Suckling (for Mr. Suckling just deduct 3-8 points from any score he offers and ignore his description of the wine). As may be needless to say, Total Wine and other such places tend to use Suckling's ratings almost exclusively.
Importers to look for
There are numerous excellent importers who specialize in bringing in high-value wines from top traditional producers; their name on the bottle is a guarantee of authenticity and value. Unfortunately these producers are poorly represented in Arizona generally and Tucson specifically but a few wines can be found and the names of these great importers are well worth knowing if you travel outside our vinous hinterlands (this is far from a complete list!):
Eric Solomon/European Cellars, Kermit Lynch, Robert Kacher Selections, Winebow, Handpicked Selections, Kysela Père et Fils, Jorge Odoñez/Classical Wines of Spain, Terry Thiese, Giuliana Imports, Neal Rosenthal selections.
The local retail wine scene
Costco should be your first choice, as their prices and high-value private label (Kirkland brand) wines put them in a league of their own. But you have to know the rules and play by them:
1. Wine moves through Costco with incredible velocity. If you see something you like, buy as much as you are likely to drink as it may well be gone within days.
2. Look up ratings and vintages while you are in the store for unrated wines.
3. For wine ratings, subscribe to Costco Wine Blog, Reverse Wine Snob and Vinopointer (the latter two sites cover Trader Joe's wines as well) and learn to calibrate your palate to theirs. I find Costco Wine Blog more useful by far than the other two.
4. Know the Tucson Costco pecking order: the store on East Grant has by far the best wine (and gourmet food) selection but is the furthest away and the busiest. Second best is the one off of Orange Grove in Marana, and the worst (and closest) is the one at Tucson Marketplace.
Wines to look for: Kirkland Cotes du Rhone ($6.99 but drinks like $15+ wines), Kirkland Chateauneuf du Pape (a splurge at $19.99 but drinks like it costs $40), Kirkland Gigondas ($15 - and as good as many $30-40 bottles from that appellation), Kirkland Ribera del Duero, Allegrini Palazzo della Torre, Gabbiano Chianti Classico Riserva, plus many others (see the above-mentioned blogs).
Pay special attention to wines being offered at very deep discounts on closeout. Here you can safely throw the European wine recommendation to the wind as they will often have fantastic domestic Pinot Noirs, Zinfindels, Cabernets and Chardonnays that normally sell for $20-50 a bottle at 60% off or more. Do check ratings though - I always bring my smartphone to the store!
Total Wine is a national chain with two stores here. Download their app and check their specials frequently. They often offer 15-25% off on their "Winery Direct" wines, which are the only wines they really promote. These wines are a minefield however, as many are mediocre and very few are outstanding - while Total Wine can't be bothered to do hardly any business with the top specialist importers, preferring to make margin on promoting proprietary mediocrity.
For French winery direct choices Domaine du Mistral Cotes du Rhone (especially the bottling from Grignan which is the least expensive) and anything from the excellent Domaine Brusset or Alain Jaume are great choices. Ditto the Pierre Henri Morel wines, especially the Cotes du Rhône white. El Chopo Monastrell from Spain is another good one but I have nothing to recommend from Italy except Santa Cristina Toscano and Allegrini Palazzo della Torre at their regular [non-Winery Direct] prices.
Total Wine is really much better for beer and spirits than wine, with the best prices in town on microbrews and some truly excellent value "spirits direct" spirits. Recommended picks include Bernaroy XO Calvados and Decortet XO Cognac, which both drink like they cost double their asking prices.
Plaza Wine & Liquor on Campbell near Glenn is a much-loved small local place that is crammed to the gills with beer, wine and spirits. A bit more expensive than Total Wine to be sure but you are supporting local heroes (and they have had a really hard time through the pandemic as they were forced to go to drive-through only for many months due to their tiny store size). Great beer selection, good wine selection considering the store's small size, great spirits, especially if you like agave distillates, whisky or rum. Truly great customer service.
Rum Runner on Speedway is another local favorite with the best spirits selection in town and and an nice array of gourmet foods including cheeses and chocolates. Here you'll find rarities such as Trimbach Alsatian fruit distillates, Ferrand cognacs and carefully-curated selections of Bourbon, Single Malt Scotch, sipping rums and the top Tequilas. They don't really specialize in any one type of wine but are among the very few places in Arizona where you'll see selections from specialist importers like Neal Rosenthal, Kermit Lynch, Kysela and others.
Tap & Bottle (multiple locations) is by far the best place in town to buy and learn more about microbrewed and imported beer, and especially the local versions thereof. Passionate, friendly staff, fun atmosphere. Their wine choices can be good value but tend towards fairly esoteric stuff - especially the so-called "natural" wines which as often as not combine obscurity with undrinkability at absurd prices.
Bakery and Specialty Foods Shopping
Barrio Bread is a phenomenal bread bakery whose James Beard award-winning owner, Don Guerra, is about the hardest-working food visionary I've ever met. The place is open only limited hours (9-1 Tuesday through Saturday and they often sell out early) but you can also get a selection of their bread at Food Conspiracy Co-op downtown. Many of the most extraordinary loaves though, such as their Einkorn, Khorasan and Locavore, are only available at the bakery and only on specific days so do check their website. The place is more than worth the pilgrimage and what Don has done to create a local grain economy is so impressive. More than any other single individual I can think of he's the reason why this truly is, as UNESCO proclaimed, a City of Gastronomy.
Time Market is arguably the epicenter of the Tucson specialty food scene. It's the best pastry bakery in town (try the monkey bread or a croissant) and does a good job with its pain au levain. The restaurant side of the business offers good-not-great pizza and excellent sandwiches. Perhaps more usefully, you'll find an exceptional selection of specialty groceries, from Giuliana imports olive oils and vinegars to heirloom beans, chocolate and coffee. Very good albeit expensive produce, and don't miss their frozen meats, including wonderful sous vide half chickens, house made sausage and Niman Ranch beef and pork products.
The wine selection at Time Market is esoteric to a fault. You can certainly find some nice bottles at fairly high mark-ups, but they studiously avoid carrying almost anything priced for everyday (~$15 or less) consumption even though they clearly have access to the star importers of such wines (Solomon, Kacher, Ordoñez and son on). One everyday wine they do carry that you really should try if you like pizza or pasta is the Frico Lambrusco in cans ($11.99 for four cans, which works out to a liter of wine). It's cheap and fantastic and is exactly what they drink with their glorious food in Parma and Modena.
Trader Joe's: Shopping for wine at TJ's brings to mind a thoroughly un-PC seventh-grade joke about the difference between Russian Roulette and Polish Roulette (the latter is the same as Russian but all the barrels are loaded) - because the experience here is somewhere in between the two but tends towards the Polish version. TJ's sells an ocean of very cheap wine and some of it is out-and-out defective, a lot more painfully mediocre, and a little is very good for the asking price though not in an absolute sense. Among the current bargains are a $6.99 French Vignals Viognier and serviceable Languedoc reds sold under the Pontificis label. Always read the wine blogs before shopping here and even then buy just one bottle to try first. And don't even think of buying the Charles Shaw aka 2 Buck Chuck stuff unless you're making sangria or suffering through loss of your sense of taste caused by COVID.
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| Khorasan loaf, Barrio Bread |
While I'm an amateur (etymologically a lover of) the above foods and drinks, coffee and tea were my livelihood for many years so my standards are more exacting.
I can't in good conscience recommend any local options unreservedly. Yellow Brick Coffee is the best among a pretty unimpressive bunch of quasi-local roasters, followed by Exo Roast but the coffees on offer in both cases are limited in number, grossly overpriced and pretentiously presented along with being moderately (Yellow Brick) to severely (Exo) under-developed during roasting. You'd be far better off just buying coffee at Costco if you're on a budget, buying somewhat over-roasted but at least fairly priced beans from perennial local fave Raging Sage if local and just okay works for you, or mail ordering from Cutbow in Albuquerque if you'd enjoy supporting a roaster whose knowledge and expertise is exponentially greater than all of our local roasters put together, without getting hosed on price or putting up with totally unwarranted attitude from our local legends in their own minds.
Regarding tea, which I love just as much as coffee, the choices are simpler but no less stark. You can pay through the nose for Chinese teas from 7 Cups and as long as you prefer greens or oolongs and don't care what you pay you may be okay with that option. It's certainly a lovely place to drink a cup of tea and enjoy a bit of food, albeit for prices that match those of the toniest cocktail bars. But if you enjoy black teas or don't particularly enjoy spending more for a cup of tea than for a glass of good wine you'll need to resort to mail order, as I do. Yunnan Sourcing has a stunning array of great Chinese teas at excellent prices, while Capital Tea in Toronto offers a wonderful selection of hearty black teas, including the best selection of Ceylons anywhere, wonderful Assams and a carefully-curated set of Darjeelings, at unbeatable prices. Last but not least, Teabox in northern India continues to disrupt the industry with its direct-to-consumer sales of teas from India's top growing regions, including Assams and Darjeelings of unrivaled freshness that will arrive at your door months before you'll see them from any other vendor.
Chocolate
Monsoon Chocolate is well worth a visit and certainly worth supporting if you care more about "local" [whatever that means when one specializes in a product whose raw material is exclusively grown many thousands of miles away] than either quality or value in an absolute sense. They have some excellent "bean to bar" chocolates, albeit at prices that are (necessarily, given their tiny scale) 30% or more higher than bars of equal or better quality from established producers.
Otherwise do what the professionals (and savvy amateurs) do and place your mail order (during the November-April window when it's safe to ship chocolate here) from Chocosphere in Oregon, which has been importing great chocolate for far longer than any of the newbie "artisan" chocolate places have been in existence. Start with Valrhona single origins and blends for a reference point, check out Michel Cluizel for comparison, dabble in Guido Gobino if you love (or wish to get to love) the wickedly great Piedmontese chocolate with hazelnut confection known as gianduja, throw in a Hot Masala Chai bar from Dolfin. You can't go wrong with either their selections or their personal advice - and will kick yourself for having paid far more for less elsewhere. They put out a great newsletter and have been in the chocolate business so long that it's fair to say they've probably forgotten more about chocolate than the newbie bean-to-bar crowd of recent years will ever know.
