More booze for your dollar
MB Spirits, the review
The final pieces cracked from my thin shell of a young man’s mind about two weeks ago, falling into the compost bin of life, when I found myself engrossed by the opening of a new supermarket.
If I can give myself any credit for caring so much: I’m referring to one of the largest Market Baskets in the state, which opened Jan. 13 off Route 20 in Shrewsbury, perhaps the most anticipated grocery store unveiling in recent memory.
The enthusiasm over the newest DeMoulas definitely shows I’m no longer a spring chicken — but have you seen those prices for the rotisserie chickens?
I’m not going to review the layout or offerings of this Market Basket, where I have now visited three times, like so many members of that bastion for sophisticated food criticism and nuanced debate, the Facebook group, Worcester Eats.
I will, however, provide you my thoughts on MB Spirits, the 14,400-square-foot beer, liquor and wine shop adjacent to the supermarket.
It is the review you didn’t know you needed.
MB Spirits has brightest lights of any liquor store I’ve entered in recent memory. If you’ve not finished grocery shopping first next door, allowing your eyes to adjust to the luminescence there, the fluorescent beams could leave you briefly dazed, having you looking for $2.99 per pound special London broil shoulder steak in the gin aisle.
The long open craft beer cooler, to the left when you walk in, beckons with a resplendent glow, though. It is a beautifully packed beer cooler, to be sure, with a panoply of cans on the top two rows and an array of 12-packs on the bottom. Nary a gap could be found when I visited, with the entire cooler stocked completely.
I’m pleased MB placed the craft beer cooler closer to the front of the store and far enough away from the domestic cooler, which sits on the back wall behind the spirit aisles. All the cold craft beer can be found at room temperature, too, just across from the cooler.
The brewery selection, at least for most of the four-packs and six-packs, was decidedly New England, with nearly everything I saw from Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire or Vermont. The brews available struck me as the beer version of the Billboard’s Hot 100.
Because apart from the shelves being very IPA heavy, my only significant complaint — and I’m nitpicking here — was the beers, while from fantastic, standard-bearing brewers, were limited to the hits, cleaned up and suitable for radio; there didn’t seem a lot of desire from the store to delve deep into the breweries’ catalog while ordering, instead just opting for the top-sellers.
I get that a new shop wouldn’t want to overreach by going with something lesser known from, say, Burlington Beer Co., and there’s nothing wrong with keeping plenty of “Elaborate Metaphor,” “Uncanny Valley,” and “It’s Complicated Being a Wizard,” all phenomenal IPAs, in stock. But I’m hoping, in the days, weeks and years ahead, to find offbeat gems that can truly separate MB Spirits from its competitors — at least in terms of craft beer.
As for spirits and wine, Market Basket’s liquor store shines by leaning on the two elements that attract so many shoppers to its grocery stores: variety and value. The grocery stores famous tagline, “More for your dollar,” could not be truer here. From bourbons to tequilas, whites to reds, MB Spirits rolls out a smartly curated, prudently priced collection of spirits and wines.
Of all places, I knew a supermarket would carry plenty of so-called supermarket wines like Josh Cellars, but then there were so many of my favorite lesser seen reds, too.
The spirit aisles were equally fruitful, with enough small batch and local liquids to keep me browsing and buying for more time than my budget would allow.
Given Market Basket’s prodigious buying power, though, that budget goes a little further. It is a sad truth that the smaller liquor stores simply cannot compete across the board pricewise with the big chain stores. MB had some wines and spirits priced even lower than I’ve seen at that well-known massive liquor store.
The best thing, in the end, I can say about MB Spirits is that it helped Market Basket usurp Wegman’s in Northborough as my home supermarket. Next week, expect a eulogy to Wegman’s, as I bid it a final farewell.