Beer, Wine & Spirits in Port Washington

In 1936, nearly three years after the end of Prohibition, Station Plaza Wine and Spirits opened its doors. And so long as alcohol has remained legal, Station Plaza has remained on Kraft Avenue, its shop stocked with top-shelf spirits including brandy, tequila, and sambuca.

Though it has a wide selection of hard liquor, the store really specializes in wine. Its collection includes more than 2,500 hand-selected labels from around the world. Wine consultants can help narrow down a patron’s search for the perfect bottle by wine type, region, or producer, and they can even steer customers in the direction of more hard-to-find varietals or organic wines. The Station Plaza team also champions wines that rank in their top-rated category. The discerning criteria for inclusion on this list are taste and seasonality, rather than whether it stains your lips an attractive color. To learn more, check out the wine blog one of Station's owners contributes to.

At Grape Beginnings, passionate wine aficionado Frank D’Aponte splits his time between producing his own high-quality vintages and instructing others on how to do the same. Frank has a decade of winemaking experience under his belt; as a third-generation winemaker, grape juice runs through his veins. Frank has deepened his knowledge with extensive travel throughout the Napa and Sonoma valleys, studying under master winemakers such as James Allen of Sequoia Grove Vineyards. Novice vintners learn from the duo as they delve into every aspect of the process, including pressing fresh grapes from California, Chile, Italy, and Argentina, racking in oak barrels, bottling with custom-made labels, and smashing the bottles over the bumper of a new car to christen it.