How is wine cataloged on grocery shelves

A pet peeve of mine is not being able to find the wines I want at the grocery store. I've asked the employees and no one seems to know other than to say, "Well, all the cabs are here, all the Merlots are here" etc. Not always so. I've tried looking for it alphabetically, but it is a maze. Any suggestions?

[Robin Garr]

A pet peeve of mine is not being able to find the wines I want at the grocery store. I've asked the employees and no one seems to know other than to say, "Well, all the cabs are here, all the Merlots are here" etc. Not always so. I've tried looking for it alphabetically, but it is a maze. Any suggestions?

Karen, there's really no standard procedure, but most wine shops - and groceries too - either sort wines by country and region or by grape.

We don't have grocery wine in my state, but as a general rule, one of the reasons I like to buy from shops that specialize in wine is that they generally know a little about the subject, organize the shelves intelligently, and can offer competent answers to questions.

[David M. Bueker]

Most stores I have been in do it by price. The more expensive wines are higher up.

Some places do it purely by marketing incentive - the sepcial deals get eye level placement.

At my local market they stock the shelves by producer, which I find rather puzzling, other than the fact that my wife's chardonnay happens to right next to my merlot or shiraz, so I only have to bend over once


The bigger stores we shop do a pretty good job of cataloging by varietal as primary and price as secondary within that varietal.

I try to buy wine when it is on sale. I paid special attention today as to how it was cataloged on the shelves.... it was a mess, to me, anyway. Cabs were all over the place. Since we have our fair share of local wineries, they now have an end cap of local wines, plus, they are spread out all over the normal shelving. Since Raley's changed shelving a few months ago, I find the entire store very confusing. It is as if they want you to wander around looking for things, and they keep changing. I think there is a conspiracy to drive us all mad.

ok - i've done this from the other end.

distributors generally determine the 'set' of the store - for supermarkets at least.

suppliers to the distributors tell them how they want it done

generally speaking they want as many of their products as possible, as many facings of those products as possible and most importantly they want them all together.

the closer to eye level the better - the corolary to this is the 'ribbon' set. you have your best seller several facings wide at eye level and the rest of your line ribboned below.

most supermarkets are set two ways - ribbons for the 'brands' and 'varietal' for the others. so gallo's livingston and such will be ribboned and the others will be in the varietal section. you get a much better 'presence' with the ribbon - so 'brands' - fetzer, masson, inglenook, woodbridge etc want to be done that way. (hoke needs to chime in here) if there is a varietal section, the upscale 'brands' want to be there. for someone like clos du bois there is a serious issue as to whether to be in the ribbon set or in the varietal set - they are now a 'brand' that aspires to their former 'premium' image.

similar notions apply to fine wine shops; but supermarkets increasingly have 'fine' wine sections - which really are just the clos du bois' of the world and there is where the fur flies.

A pet peeve of mine is not being able to find the wines I want at the grocery store.

Isn't it deliberate? Encourages you to search through the bottles and maybe find and buy something you hadn't intended to.