Arthur D.
Yelp
Although Wein & Co is my favorite wine shop, my experience here wasn't thrilling. Good wines, but so-so service do deserve just 3 stars.
When I moved to Vienna several years ago, I wasn't into wine. Even when a lot of people drank wine around me, it didn't catch on. The taste just didn't do it. The white wines were almost peppery, and reds were plain sour. How could someone drink that?
After I and all my friends had just accepted that fact, there was 1 particular guy who didn't accept it. He invited me to test different wines, while he gave explanations and talked about the colorful wold of wines, wineries and everything else connected with it. Eventually he hit the right nerve: he introduced me to sweet wine. Well, not just sweet wine, but super sweet dessert wines. The minute I tasted that, I was sold. Thus, I entered the world of wine.
Understanding that I could not drink dessert wines just at every occasion that other were drinking wine, I ventured out a bit, and through the help of some knowledgeable friends, and people, I found some "normal" wines I liked. Most of them red and a lonely white in between.
Fast forward a few years. Having drank now a few bottles of this and that, I never so good knew what wine I liked or not - before having tasted it. So, living relatively close to a wine & co, one day one of the employees chatted us up and we discussed about different wines. We just told what we liked, and after some talking he could clearly tell me what wines we would probably like. What to look for in a wine. And it worked. With the tips from him, I could pick wines with a very high chance of even liking them.
Except from having a wide range of wines, and OK prices, the people there can be really good too. Honestly, not all, but some of them really shine. You go to the right locations of wein + co, and you'll even meet a Winzer or two.
Except for just being a good wine shop (take care, wine is OK prices, some other stuff absolutely not), they also opened some bar-shop-somethings. You go shop some wine, they bring it to your table to enjoy. Works fine.
Until this last visit. We were 4, shopped 2 bottles, and as we were hungry, ordered some anti-pasti. Honestly, it took ages before the food came (true, it's not a restaurant, maybe I shouldn't have expectations on that). The platter is really nice, and after we had finished it, the wine also came. Right - the wine came after we finished that. Half-way during the meal, the glasses were already put in place, but the wine was still absent. After a while, we saw that we were apparently in the middle of a chance of shift. This should definitely be handled more professionally. It was really clear that the old shift didn't want to do anything anymore. I've seen that other people on other tables were also waiting for service, so it wasn't just us.
Anyhow, we finished the excellent wines, paid and moved on.
I will be back for sure to buy wine, but sitting there and drinking is less the experience it used to be.