Curley’s Wine Cellar

You don’t usually expect an everyday type local off licence to have any good wines but Curley’s has some pretty good French red which is a lot more than I can say for various other off licences of my acqaintance in this fair city of Belfast. I’d have stocked up there and then, but for the fact that the rest of day would have been spent lugging bottles of wine around. Instead I made do with getting a newspaper but otherwise Curley’s is supersized with huge stock of spirits, beers catering for all needs in the alcohol line.

This is one busy off license! It’s a good size too. Not only do they have security on the two doors (entrance and exit), but the fact that there are two doors makes it a pretty smooth operation — in one way, out the other. It’s almost a one-​way system. They’ve a lot of big fridges in here, which means they’ve a huge stock of beer. They also do some good offers on wines and beers — 3 bottles of wine for a tenner, 20 pack of bud (300ml bottles) for £12.99… just as a few examples.
You’ll get plenty of big bags of crisps (that’s ‘chips’ for our American friends) and dips and all the snacky things you’ll need for a night in with a few beers, a few friends, and a few DVDs or an Xbox. One of my favourite things about this place is that it has a ‘Sahara hot nut’ machine. For those of you unfortunate enough not to have tried these, they are nuts with a crispy shell and spicy coating and they are heated in the machine. Very tasty and so addictive that I’m almost certain they would’ve been subject to scrutiny from the British Medical Association, or some such governmental health organisation.

Curley’s is my local massive off license. It’s situated on the corner of Atlantic Avenue on the Antrim Road. When it opened it caused a shop in my street to close down because it just couldn’t compete with a place of this size. But I’ve grown to forgive it due to the fantastic deals it have to offer. These deals have helped me save a lot of money on nights where I have forgotten what’s happened (due to the deals mostly!). The staff are all very pleasant and have no problem going to the back to get something that might be out of stock on the shop floor. They open most public holidays which is good as it’s about the only place that is!