Alphabet City Wine Co. (100 Ave. C)

It's not easy finding a good wine store in the East Village, let alone one that is literally a stone's throw from your apartment. Normally, I'd have to schlep over to Astor place (Yeah, I know, not that far; but I'm a lazy bastard) to Warehouse Wines or Astor Wines. So, you can imagine my delight when the guys from In Vino opened ABC Wine Co. I'm not quite sure how they did it. I used to see the gated storefront all the time & then, presto; instant awesome wine shop!

They've only recently opened, but have a very impressive selection of international wines, most of them being moderately priced. Local & micro brew beers are possibly on the way (pending licenses, etc.) The staff know their trade, the decor is awesome (I particularly like the little sitting area) & with time, I'm sure that the inventory of wines will grow leaps & bounds.

Check the store out if you can... Also, have a gander at their blog.

Snooth.com

My cousin Alesha (often a guest at the club meals I cook) recently got a job at Snooth a pretty cool new website. Think of it as a mix between social networking & a wine review site. You can post reviews of wines & Snooth will give you recommendations based on your ratings. You can search by price, vintage, type, region, varietal or user-submitted tags. It's also possible to buy wines directly over through the website. I haven't had a chance to review any wines myself, but the Thursday Club crew have always been saying that we were going to review the wines that we drink at every meal (& trust me, we drink A LOT), so hopefully we'll start using Snooth.

The site is still in Beta, so I'm sure that plenty of other awesome features will be added soon. If you sign up, add me as a buddy (http://www.snooth.com/profiles/JBoogie)