Blanchards Wine & Spirits

Great selection, generally knowledgable staff - they'll find someone who knows what their talking about - and decent prices. Solid mix of bombers and six/four packs. Great national representation of labels from west to east and lots in between. Locally there's lots of Pretty Things, Jack's Abbey, CBC, Mystic. I've never seen anything from Wormtown or Night Shift but that doesn't mean they don't get them. Great store.

 

 

I found a lot outdated IPA's on the shelf.

 

Generally speaking, it is better than what I would expect for the neighborhood and has no shortage of treats. Prices seem reasonable, although I find plenty of value with Sierra Nevada 12-packs and Sam Adams and Saranac sampler packs. The occasional Double Jack is a splurge.

I was very surprised when stopping into this store today as I had been there in the past and didn't think a lot of the selection. Wow! Now my favorite store within a few mile radius of my house in JP and completely blows away the Blanchard's in JP.

Great selection of MA (Blue Hills, Wachusett, Mayflower) and New England region (lots of Geary's, Gritty's, VT brews, nice Alagash selection), plus some other goodies from the Northeast like Ithaca and a great assortment of Southern Tier.

Another nice thing was to see single 12 oz. bottles on sale, which I don't see a lot of in Boston proper. It was limited, but they had Founders, Green Flash, and Sierra Nevada all up for a mix your own six at pretty good prices.

Bomber selection was the best prices I've seen in the city, with a lot of Port, Lagunitas, Sierra Nevada (Estate was only $8.99 compared to $10+ I've seen at all other stores), and Avery bottles cheaper than what I've paid even in the suburbs.

The staff was very friendly and able to converse very well about the breweries in my basket. This is not the case with the Blanchard's in JP.

My only qualm with them was slightly dusty bottles, which led me to only purchase bottles with dates on them if time would affect that style of beer. There was also an Estate from 2009 on sale for the same price as the 2010.

Overall, this place doesn't have the selection of one of the biggies in the suburbs or the multi-bottle discount of some other stores, but I will gladly be running here now when I can't make the pilgrimage type voyage out of town.

Since moving to West Roxbury, this has become my new go-to beer store. Even better, it's right down the street. Made my first trip there this week to pick up Xmas presents and some beer for my new home. Service was good here, as I was asked twice if I needed help finding anything. There are just racks upon racks of 22 oz bottles and six packs to choose. Also, the entire back wall is coolers filled with six packs, 12 packs, and cases. The selection runs the gambit from the best local craft brews to obscure imports. I picked up a good haul on my first trip: bombers of Otter Creek Imp IPA, Shipyard XXXX IPA, Schafly 2007 Barleywine, McNeills Pullman Porter, and a 12 pack of Shipyard Prelude. All totaled was about $45. I noticed that prices seemed to be about 50 cents to $1 higher on some items when compared to Macy's, right down the street. But the store is a lot nicer, the selection seems to be bigger, and it's closer to my house. Fine with me. They'll be seeing a lot of me here.

UPDATE: 07/21/04
They now carry stuff that does come in 750ml bottle form. Particularly cool is they now have a section of refrigerator that is basically dedicated to BA. All the beers in the new refrigerator have good reviews from BA and even the "shelf talkers" have been printed and attached to the shelves. The new stuff includes 3 types of Chimay, Duvel, all the Brewery Ommegang stuff, Samual Smith, Victory, some rogue, a bunch of Berkshire Brewing Company. And from what I was told, more is to come.



Good sized selection of beer and wine. The beer selection is large, but limited to beers that come in 6-pack form, no 750ml bottles here. They do have a lot of good imports and craft brew, I saw a lot of magic hat, victory, tons of German hefe's, stuff from Mexico, good American craft brews, and stuff from England. While I was there I was asked twice if I need any help, I asked if they carry anything like a unibroue or a chimaye, they said no but they are trying to bring in more variety (their variety is already huge for 6-pack beers). They had a deal going on with Staatliches Hofbräuhaus, if you buy a case you get a free stein. Out of curiosity I asked what the stein looked like. They showed me a huge glass stein, with golf ball size dimples all around it and an HB logo on the front. Then the guy says "I’ll give it to you if you buy a six pack of HB", so of course I said yes and a pack of Münchner Kindl Weissbier. $7 for a pack of quality brew and a stein? Good deal!