While frolicking around the Andersonville neighborhood the other day practicing with my fancy-shmancy school-issued DSLR, I found an awesome little wine and liquor store. There are a lot of places like this in Chicago – they look like they’d be overpriced and disappointing on the outside but then you discover they have a fabulous selection. Andersonville Wine and Spirits seems like exactly that kind of place. It’s not large by any means, but they have a carefully cultivated selection of wines, spirits, beers and other adult beverages.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how many organic liquors they carry, including many made locally. I was even more pleasantly surprised to see they have Berkshire Mountain Distilleries products. The company’s small-batch Ethereal Gin won our gin taste-off last summer. It’s delicious.
That’s along with a nice selection of wines and hard ciders, among other wonderful things, including three or four varieties of gluten-free beer.
They also have my beloved Gazela, which, considering what a sunny spring day it was, I had to pick up a bottle of. I also grabbed a nice bottle of a Normandy cider, which I wound up drinking without taking a photo for posterity. Ooops.
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| A sampling of the store’s large bitters selection |
Andersonville is currently one my favorite ‘hoods in Chicago, but I’m a little biased as it’s technically part of my neighborhood –Edgewater– and is therefore a very close walk from my apartment. But really, it’s pretty darn cool there. It was originally a Swedish neighborhood so there’s still a certain Scandinavian element about it. It’s also a little yuppie-ish I suppose, but it’s close enough to Uptown that the proximity keeps the Park Slope-ishness of it from getting to be too much, in my opinion.
I can’t believe they have bmd.