Beer Store Review: Total Wine & More – West Orange NJ

Continuing on my quest to fine good Beer Stores, I traveled 20 minutes out of my home base to the Essex Green Strip mall in West Orange NJ.  Total Wine & More was on the backside, lower level, a bit hard to find if you don’t know there is a lower level to Essex Green.

Total Wine & more Essex Green NJ

As you would imagine by the name of the store they seem to have a pretty extensive wine selection, but we want BEER!  After finding their beer aisle I was initial pretty excited.  Right off the bat I found a bottle Dogfish Head Burton Baton stuck behind another bottle and this got me very excited because I’ve been looking for this beer for several months and had it on my beer cellar’s wish list.  Total Wine’s thing seems to be the build your own six pack, not a new idea, but if you like to sample lots of different beer it is a good concept.  However, for this to work for me your selection needs to be extensive and unique, which this wasn’t.

Since I write a lot of reviews, I really like to by 22oz and 750ml bottle, which Total Wine has a Very limited selection of and all but the Stone Smoked Porter I have tasted. (I did buy the Smoked Porter).  Also the store heavily favored domestic Craft Beer, There was very little in the way of Belgians or other European Beers and styles.

Overall I found this store to be better then many in my area of NJ, good if you want to buy 12oz beers by the bottle and looks like it may have the occasional “find” once in a while.  I will probably go back to this store once in a while in attempt to find something I’ve been looking for.  But, it doesn’t have the selection and breadth on my current Go To Store, Shopper Vineyard in Clifton.

Total Wine & More
Essex Green Shopping Center
495 Prospect Ave. & I-280
West Orange, NJ 07052
973.324.0899