Jungle Jim's?

Anyone have any idea how good the wine selection is at Jungle Jim's in Cincinnati? It's apparently an amazing funky huge entertaining store with everything you want if you can wade through what you don't want, including a lot of wine and a world class selection of exotic fruits and vegetables.

No idea. I never seem to make it there when I visit my mom in Dayton although I intend to every trip. I understand there is a whole aisle devoted to hot sauces. However, since Ohio has state minimum pricing regardless of selection prices will be poor. I stopped shopping for wine in Ohio except for what I consume during visits due to the obscence pricing.

I haven't been to JJ's in a few years, but I found them to have a decent selection for a grocery store and as mentioned above their prices are...well, Ohio prices. Anecdotally, I have a friend who purchased a lot of his wines from JJ's and it seemed he had a high proportion of "distressed" bottles.

Last time I was in JJ's the wine selection was huge. It would take quite a while to browse it in detail.

BTW, there was a locked display cabinet containing several older vintages of Petrus, like back into the 50s, if you are interested. If not, similarly expensive, hard-to-find wines were behind the doors.

The store and its owner are both a piece of work. When Kings Island amusement park decided to remove its animal preserve and the monorail that ran through it, Jim bought the monorail. Its on the store property.

The beer selection is phenomenal too.

International foods? Multiple aisles worth. Live (for the moment) fish swimming in tanks? Got 'em and not just the mundane lobster. At the risk of stereotyping, the ethnic profile of the fish department customers did not match the profile of customers in the rest of the store. Definitely a lower percentage of us high-fat-food-consumers and a high percentage of folks who know what to do with a fish.

Cooking classes? Beer tastings? Wine tastings? Does all of them.

I'd say its worth a trip if you're a wineaux or a foodie, particularly the latter. Try to avoid Saturday morning though....it would be the grocery store equivalent of Filene's basement at that time! And allow a lot of time to get through because the store is enormous. Make sure you see it all....some parts are kinda tucked away off the beaten path.