Here in the North East, we have a grocery store chain called Wegmans.  It’s not your average grocery store, it’s a bit of a “Foodies Paradise” with lot’s of high quality food you wouldn’t find in most grocery store chains.  My wife has been singing the praises of this grocery store for years and I have always thought her zealous love for the place to be a bit ridiculous.  It’s made it worse that they aren’t everywhere, the closest one to use is just short of an hour away.  Not a practical place to grocery shop when we have 3 large chains within 5 minutes of the house.

Well, today, my wife turned this doubting Thomas into a believer.  There is a Wegmans just a few minutes away from Victory Brewing company which we just toured yesterday  (read my Victory Brewing Company Tour blog post).  Not only is it truly a fantastic grocery store they have an awesome take out beer section.  Pennsylvania has some wacky liqour and beer laws, one of them is that Beer is only available from a beer distributor where you have to buy it by the case or from a bar/restaurant where you can get it by the 6 pack.  Most bars have the standard crappy selection of 6 packs and they are overpriced.   Wegmans, on the other hand, has a cafe that they setup in their grocery store and in that cafe is a very impressive craft beer takeout section.   They had a very tiny little corner of the beer section that had a few cases of the large commercial beers.  The vast majority of the beer was from microbreweries across the United States and tons of great International beers.  They even have single bottles that you are allowed to buy which I thought was illegal in PA.

We had already spent more money that we had budgeted on our beer and lunch session at Victory Brewing Company so I didn’t want to spend a lot.  I got a few beers but now that I know where to go to get more, I am sure we will be making more frequent grocery trips to Wegmans.

I picked up:

• 1 750 ml bottle of Ommegang Abbey Ale
• 1 500 ml bottle of Samuel Smith Tadcaster
• And 1 355 ml bottle of Lindemans Framboise Lambic

I have never had any of these beers before so I am excited to try them.  In fact, I have never had a Lambic from any brewery but have heard some really interesting things about them so I am looking forward to trying it.

1. Xander Taylor Says:
   March 8th, 2010 at 3:12 pm

   Hello. Just read your blog about Wegmans and I must tell you that I too once had a zealous love for Wegmans. It is an amazing grocery store. But if you dig and do some research on them, you will find that they once had a chicken house (where they raised their own name-brand chickens) and they were neglecting the health of the chickens. When they were found out, they simply sold the chicken coop. They also have a history of acting like Gestapo agents toward any customer who misbehaves unwittingly in their stores. I’m one of them. Having a quality store and treating customers (even your own chickens) with compassion and consideration are two different things. Great store. Lousy people.