Best place to buy wine making supplies

I have the Italian but modified it for sparklers; I don't use it often, I use the Portuguese. The plastic jaws on it are easier on corks, the brass jaws can score the corks. I have used Musca.com in Ottawa for corkers but won't get corks there.

I use a spray bottlefor sanitizing, it's easier.

Joe

Well, Danny, I'm kinda new also, but purchase a lot of stuff online. Here was my approach. Google has a FROOGLE option to search retail stores - I found 3 good places searching for floor corkers (since I look at postage as part of attractiveness, and a floor corker is just a little lead weight. smile. so I looked at price plus shipping for 4 sites and choose the cheapest total price.) Then I found that eBay has a wine making section, so i look there at times for bottles, and widgets i'm looking to purchase. In my opinion (my ebay score is over 400)there is no ONE site, as it depends on specials, sales and shipping charges (some charge a LOT for light items, and some charge little for heavy items (building business, I guess). With that all said: Here is where I purchased recently:

I like the first two since they have lots of information, not just a catalog. I bought my floor corker at :

(portuguese type, not italian).

But this is from some> Hi,

In looking around, it appears that many of the homebrew companies buy equipment and chemicals from the same original sources (frequently with just a slight difference in price), so that convenience and service have been my guides to choosing where I buy items from.

My personal favorite is Beer, Beer and More Beer, as when I started in this they were the most helpful and best supplied local homebrew store to me (SF Bay Area). I've moved, and the local stores are OK and I use them for emergency (what do you mean I ran out of Campden?) trips, but if I plan ahead I mail-order/web-order from B3. Their new wine-only site is morewinemaking.com, but their main site is morebeer.com

Rob

The grape and granary is pretty good, esp if you place a large order. thegrape.net

I don't have any problems with the merchants listed in the preceding posts, but I do like the quality of product from stpats

When I bought a floor corker, I preferred their brass- jawed model and shipping over other sites. I also recently bought a crusher/destemmer from them and was pleased.

ebay has alot of winemaking kits and stuff. some of the items are half of my local wine store . lucas

Another option is CraigsList

If you're not familiar with it, it basically a free-to-sell online classifieds site that is gaining popularity in most major cities. The site is location-specific, so you might be able to find equipment in and around the city you live in and avoid those high shipping costs associated w/ the larger pieces of wine equipment.

On the commercial side, here are my 3 current favorites:

St Pats -

- (pro) best prices on most items, great service, speedy shipping, spare parts, short lead-time, shipping confirmation emails sent, pre-order specials, good user manual archive

- (con) not a lot of beginner equipment, no frills website, shipping prices not given ahead of time (though usually cheap if you live in the SW or W)

More Beer -

- (pro) decent prices, free shipping on non-freight items, searchable website, beginner equipment, pre-order specials, instruction manuals - (con) longer lead times (~1 week), no shipping confirmation emails sent

Valley Vintner -

- (pro) unique items (like fermentor shower cap), wine testing service, sends instructions for non-intuitive products

Happy Spending, -David

Gotta put in a plug for our local shop in Woodland Hills, California:

John has a really good selection of stuff, right down to the very arcane.

Tom S

That's a nice site; the info is great and those French barrels are pretty reasonable...

Joe

That's a nice site; the info is great and those French barrels are pretty reasonable...

Joe