The Wine Castle

Located just off the freeway, so this is a pretty convenient location. In a large shopping center, plenty of parking. This is mostly a wine store, but there is a pretty sizable selection of beer, too. Pretty cramped setup. It’s certainly on the upper end of what I would consider acceptable in terms of pricing. Lots of central coast offerings (Island, Figueroa Mountain, Firestone, etc.). Not much in the way of service, but the guy working was friendly enough.

Visited November 3, 2013.

Located in a large shopping center on a main street. There is a Ross and a Starbucks in the same shopping center in case you drive by and not see the sign (like I did). The selection isn’t bad but it’s expensive as all hell. No way I was going to pay $15 for a Rodenbach Grand Cru. They have a lot of the big names in California present like Anchor, Sierra, Stone, Firestone, Drakes, Green Flash, and now also Knee Deep, Figueroa Mountain, and Heretic. The clerk was nice and asked twice if I needed any help. I didn’t have the heart to tell him his prices suck ass and I won’t be spending any money there. At least parking is easy, even if getting back to the freeway isn’t entirely obvious.

Better selection than Mandell’s, but higher prices as well. Nothing really special here either, but a decent selection of shelf locals and imports.

Decent strip mall bottle shop if you are in the area and need a decent variety of brews. But it is jammed and their microbrews are not very complete with for example only three Alesmiths on the shelf when I visited.

A buddy of mine needed to stop by the ATM, and as we pulled near, I saw this little shop nearby, so I ran in for a look-see. Really cramped quarters upon entering. Narrow aisles run the length of the store. The right wall of the place is dedicated to beer. A nice cooler section filled with a good number of CA-offerings. Decent amount of bombers, and the Belgian section was above average. From what I saw of the prices, they seemed reasonable for the area. Nice little shop that were I staying in the area, I would get my bottle-fix for sure.