Montgomery County Liquor & Wine

I stopped by next door after my massage to look around. A nice layout for a suite space, the wine selection was upfront & the beer & liquor in the back. They have a mass variety of wine, including a small organic selection. The staff was friendly & pride themselves on personal, knowledgeable customer service… with offering a fantastic selection, hard to beat prices & sales.
Although Malbec is my preferred choice, it still takes quite a bit of knowledge and experience to wade through the choices.
The cashier Bella exuded favorable experience on the retail side & was pretty educating & helpful with making my selections.
What a quick & interesting vino lesson as a contemporary solution to the wine purchasing experience.
Did I mentioned the great sales?!

My go-​to liquor store for those that live in Friendship Heights. The sale prices are unbeatable. During the holidays this store offer cheap gift sets that comes with top-​shelf alcohol, matched with tumbler sets. It would be $ 10 or $ 20 more expensive at comparable stores few blocks away.
One thing to point out is this store does not have cold beers in stock. They do offer a decent selection of beers but none of the 6 packs are refrigerated. If you’re looking to pick up a 30-​pack of natty light then you’ll have to go down the street for the more fratty pickup.
The staff there is extremely knowledgeable. I’ve asked for recommendations for dinner parties and wine pairings for different types of food. The people there are friendly and do not try to up-​sell you when you’re visiting. If only they did a loyalty card so I could collect points for shopping here so often.
It’s opened for reasonable hours during the weekdays and I believe it’s also opened on Sunday. It’s well worth the trip to come here to pick up all of your liquor and wine needs.

Overall, this is a reliable store. Many of the clerks have been friendly. Recently, however, I had a rather strange experience with one of the clerks. After selecting my items and approaching the cashier, I presented my I.D. The clerk then asked me to state my age, which I did (because the I.D. is mine and I am well over the legal age to purchase alcohol in the United States of America). No problem with him asking; the store surely faces heavy fines if an underage patron is able to purchase alcohol. What happened next was a bit strange.
Out of curiosity, I asked whether the clerk asks each patron for their I.D. He replied that he does not, and that it depends on the circumstances. I then asked which factors he considered, to which he responded that he considers a number of things, such as appearance. He then stated that he did not want to get into it. I replied that I understood, and that I was just curious on their practices. I then collected my bag and then as I walked away he said «It has nothing to do with race.» Ummm, what? At no point in the conversation did I imply, suggest or verbally indicate that I thought race had anything to do with his decision to ask for my I.D. But thank you for clarifying, sir. Good to know that my race was not an issue here. Or was it? Weird.

This was the first place my boyfriend and I went to buy any kind of alcohol when we moved to DC, and though we’ve been to other places since and found others that we love, we always make sure to come back here and support this business. They have a surprisingly great wine selection (considering the generic name of the store and look of the place) with good prices for the area, and also a really excellent selection of liquor. I can pretty much find anything I want there. There is also one member of the staff who is so, so nice, remembers us, has conversations with us, and just makes us feel really appreciated every time. Some of the other guys are just average, but overall they still give good service and are certainly knowledgable about their products. The décor is extremely sterile, and they don’t seem to often do things like tastings or other community-​oriented events. But as a whole, this is a really great business and I encourage folks to go try them out.

This is a review of Mont Co Wine @ Liquor Cabin John (Tuckerman lane) and Potomac Village. The staff @ Cabin John is way friendlier than Potomac. The asst. mgr. @ CJ even (literally) went out of his way to bring me a hard to find champagne from another MoCo wine store. Compare that to the guys in Potomac that make it obvious they could care less if you buy one bottle or 100! Generally, the staff is woefully ignorant of their own wine selection usually having never tried anything over $ 20/​bottle… The only reason I rate MoCo Wine w/​3 stars (instead of one) is the above-​referenced service which seems to be the exception rather than the rule. If you want a «real» wine store, go to Pearson’s @ 2436 Wisc. Ave NW (upper G’twn). EVERYONE there knows wine and can help you make an informed selection. Another HUGE plus is their «back table» where they usually have 10 – 20 wines open for tasting!

After about 30 minutes of perusing the shelves of this fine establishment and finally going to the counter, the manager of the store impressed me a great deal by saying: «welcome, I haven’t seen you in the store before. «
“Thank you «I replied, I feel like I have been in every liquor store within a five mile radius except for this one.»
Wisconsin Circle is a tough little strip behind the Friendship Heights tower. Traffic is awful, but there is a parking lot and they do validate. Inside it is the very model of a modern major gener… — ooops, sorry, it is the very model of a modern Montgomery County liquor control retail establishment, and that gives you three basic guarantees:
1) Massive selection of liquors and wines, not so much on the beers.
2) If you look hard for them there are some awesome deals available.
3) Knowledgeable, friendly service.
I got The Honey a couple of bottles of Sonoma Cutrer for $ 19.99, which is $ 10 below standard retail elsewhere, and I bought myself a bottle of the Ardbeg Uigedall, which one writer anointed as the World’s Best Whiskey last year.
One thing I learned a few years ago is it is much better to focus your purchasing power on one single establishment, build a good and long term relationship with one retailer, then get access to deals, discounts, insiders stuff and general VIP treatment.
For some unknown reason I have not been able to do that with my liquor purchases — there’s a lot of lovely choices available in the Bethesda Chevy Chase area to say nothing of brilliant establishments further afield such as Ace Beverage and P Street Liquors — but I think, in the spirit of self improvement, I will make my New Year resolution for 2010 to develop a meaningful, monogamous and stable long term relationship with one and one only liquor store.

They offer an 8% discount when you buy a case of wine. I think that’s stingy, but otherwise it’s convenient to the Friendship Heights Metro.
Cheers.

It took me awhile to warm up to this place. The name is sterile and leads you to believe that there isn’t much of a selection — the inside of the store, at first glance, would support that impression, but, they actually have a good selection of liquor, beer, and wine… honestly, I purchase wine more than anything else, so my insight is probably biased towards their wine selection. They carry the standards, but also carry a relatively diverse selection — both the origin and the price point. What I appreciate most, however, is the staff — good customer service, good recommendations, and now that I’ve frequented the store for several weeks, I’m definitely treated as a regular. They know me, and welcome me back — I appreciate being recognized and appreciated for my patronage. The downside… it is a MD store and therefore not open on Sundays… regardless, I stop there more often than other places, especially given its extremely close proximity to the Friendship Heights metro.