Bacchus Wine & Spirits

Best variety in Shoreview/​North Oaks area. Having recently moved from NoCal Bacchus is a great find!

I love popping in here once in a while, when I want to be more adult-​y and buy something other than cheap liquor and light beer. The first time I came here was in pursuit of Shipyard’s Pumpkinhead beer, a seasonal beer from Maine that basically runs from everyone’s faucets in New England. I was terrified to find that not many places carry it in MN, until I called Bacchus.
Whether I come here looking for something specific or to browse, I always leave happy and excited (or more excited than usual to start drinking…). Though it’s not a huge place, it packs a lot of fun choices. The employees make such great and informative suggestions that I always happy to take their advice and even try something new. They are so knowledgable but also honest — it doesn’t feel sales-​y. I’ve enjoyed a lot of wine, beer, seasonals, and beer-​liquor-​hybrids from here. They can be a little pricey, but I like to splurge once in a while.
It’s at the end of a plaza with a big shared parking lot, so you can park your car close by when you’re hauling all of your new beer to it. I usually stop next door to Fresh & Natural for some quality food to soak up the alcohol!

Stopped in at this place the other day as I was in the area for something else and wanted to see if they had the latest Surly release as I was hoping to get it from a store rather than from a craigslst extortionist. As it happens, they didn’t have any Pentagram yet but the guy was taking a limited number of names to hold bottles for when they did get it in and kindly added me to the list. I figured as long as I was there, I should check out what else they had in stock. I believe the guy working was named Bruce. Anyway, super nice guy, he gave me the rundown of what they had, who’s beers their carry, etc. Great guy to chat with, he really knows his stuff and had great opinions on so many of the beers they carry. As for their selection, it’s certainly not the largest craft beer selection in the cities but considering the size of the shop, it’s an excellent selection. I ended up getting a 4 pack of Central Waters Peruvian Morning and a 4 pack of Sierra Nevada Ovila. Overall I’m really excited to have found this place and will definitely be back.

Super impressed with this place. I greeted immediately upon arrival, and was asked twice if I needed any help.
They had a great selection of wine, and although I didn’t look into it too much, they also seemed to have a good selection of beer too. It’s a small shop, but with a super friendly and helpful staff.
They also have a wine club!

This happened last summer but it bothered me so much that I thought I would send in a review. I purchased a 4 pack of craft beer and opened one up. It was very bad tasting. I don’t blame Bacchus for the bad beer, I blame them for the poor response. I took the beer back the same evening to get a replacement and I was told that only the manager or owner could do an exchange. I was pissed, to say the least. I got it out of the staff that the manager was doing a wine tasting at a local restaurant, so I called up the restaurant and talked to the manager of Bacchus. He said I could go back to the store and they would give me a new 4 pack. That means I would have to drive another 10 miles to get the beer. I refused and said a third trip to the store was ridiculous. After all I had been through I wanted the beer delivered to me. He agreed, so now I’m thinking okay, he’s trying to recover the customer. About 45 minutes later one of the staff brought me 3, yes 3 bottles in the 4 pack. Now I’m really pissed. I called him on it and he said one bottle must have fallen out in his car. BS! I talked to the owner the next day and the owner said, yes it is there policy to not let the staff make any returns or exchanges. Nothing she said had anything to do with being customer oriented. In fact she was quite flippant about the whole thing and didn’t even care that her employee tried to only give three bottles of beer instead of four.