Good Drop Wine Shoppe

This is my second review. I took the original down due to change of ownership. I had posted a one star review due to being very disappointed with recommendation. From the original owners, I asked for sweet desert wine, and out of the three bottles of wine I had purchased (~ $ 60 spent), none were to my satisfaction.
After reading my review, the new owner Sarah reached out to me, and provided me with a bottle she was convinced I would enjoy. She was right! I got a bottle of «pass the cookies» which was most excellent! Now I know that GDWS is a place I can rely on for getting some excellent desert wine!

Friendly, fun, and excellent wines by the bottle or glass. This is the perfect spot to enjoy a glass while waiting for your table to open at the nearby restaurants. They will even order take out for you! Service doesn’t get any better. Love this place!

This is my second review of The Good Drop. I took my friend, who is a wine rep into The Good Drop this weekend, so he could see the shop that keeps me hooked on great wine, and his parting comment was «Wow, every bottle in there, is exceptional.» That is The Good Drop. Sarah has amazing selection for the cozy space. All the way from first growth French, to the CalOrWash Wine spread.
There’s no selection of Champagne anywhere in Bend that comes close. Bolliger, Cedric Bouchard, Krug and many great grower bottles. There’s often more wines in the cellar than on display, so it’s no problem picking up multiples.
There are past-​vintage cellar wines of many regions, such as Washington and Germany, and at times, cellar lists available from local private collections. Sarah has connected us with some outstanding wines and friends, since we have moved to Bend, and when it comes to cult and hard to obtain wines, The Good Drop really gets the pick of the litter. The shop is kid friendly for kids with manners. What a total gem in downtown Bend.

Good Drop is an excellent wine shop. You can find a great bottle here at almost any price point. Not only are you supporting a great local business, but Robert has actually tasted most if not all the bottles he has in the shop. The best part in my opinion though is that you can actually open and drink a glass or two of that bottle you just purchased, while discussing it in detail with a very knowledgeable wine lover. My wife and I wandered in on a Saturday afternoon with a few hours to kill before going to a movie. Lynn had mentioned before that she would like to taste a moderately priced wine next to a more expensive bottle of the same variety just to see if the extra cost was worth it. So Robert suggested a couple bottles at each end of our price spectrum and we settled in for what would come to be known as «The Tempranillo Challange». Despite enjoying wine for many years, Lynn and I are pretty much at the «yum or yuck» stage of wine tasting. Having someone to basically coach us made a world of difference. I think for the first time we both felt like we finally understood what all those lofty adjectives commonly used in wine tasting notes are all about. If I lived in Bend I could easily see myself buying exclusively from Good Drop, its that good.

Wow what a find in Bend! My husband and I were visiting from Northern CA and stumbled upon this place. Robert, the owner helped us pick out a bottle of champagne, a white and a red for a celebratory dinner last night and his recommendations were spot on. He really knows his stuff and has a very unique ensemble of wines. Everything we had I would have again and look forward to ordering some interesting Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs from Robert in the future. A gem of a place in Bend not to missed.

A specialty store dealing with fine wines in downtown Bend is a brave undertaking in a down economy given the store’s specialty (per the website) «…dedicated to helping wine lovers like you find vintage wine, hard to find wines, and „trophy“ wines to add to your impressive collection or enjoy now with friends or family.»
We don’t do as much business with The Good Drop as we’d like as wine collecting and trophy wines are above our pay grade… literally…and not where our passion lies as wine drinkers. But for those who are looking that direction, Chris Oatman, one of the owners of this shop can’t be beat.
And one of the Good Drop’s best assets is Chris himself; who we’ve come to know well, again per his website. «My connections and knowledge of red wine, white wine and even sparkling wine makes it easy for you to get your favorites, discover new favorites, or get mainstream wines that you can drink everyday…» So one of the great advantages for we everday wine drinkers, is that Chris has great wine buys of really good wines available too!
With the holiday season upon us, it seemed the perfect time to do this Unilocal review, as Chris is among the best experts we have ever met on the breadth and depth of champagne and other sparkling wines. If there was ever a perfect time to introduce yourself to the Good Drop Wine Shoppe it is now when sparkling wines are the perfect holiday toast and holiday gift too.