Beers on the Rock: Rating 3 Little Rock & North Little Rock Liquor Stores

Have a drink, Really, any newcomer deserves it after unpacking, starting work at a new workplace and coping with a new street grid. We'll get to bars later. For now, you just want to buy a six pack, a bottle of wine or some Knob Creek, sip and put your feet up on that cardboard box. What follows are three places to find the libation you seek. 

Colonial Wines & Spirits has a great selection of beers. It really does. In fact, it may have the best selection of the those foamy, sudsy beverage wonders. The rest of the stock of wines and liquors looks to be good to excellent, too. They do tend to win the awards. What Colonial needs to work on is their customer service. Seriously. I, my wife, and several friends we know have all had unpleasant experiences there recently. 


First, I'll briefly give you mine, so you can assess it. Hey, maybe it's just me. A friend of mine and I stopped by Colonial one weekend night to pick up some brew. I don't even remember what we bought. It may have been something as prosaic as Sam Adams, or it may have been a fancy Belgian white ale. In any case, I mentioned that I was into Belgian ales just to see if one of the clerks knew of something I might have missed or wasn't out front yet. Almost instantly I got some 'tude. "No, man, I mostly drink IPAs." His tone clearly let me know he was in that camp that views Belgian beers as wussy beers, compared to real beers like IPAs. Nevermind that the Belgians have been brewing for at least as long as the Germans or Czechs; that is most of the last millenium. He was totally nonplussed when I retorted that hops were added to beer as a preservative (IPA stands for India Pale Ale and the extra hops were needed to preserve the ale on the long voyage), so in a way, enjoying highly hopped beers is like enjoying Chinese restaurant food because of its MSG. It's perfectly fine if you like IPAs, but that hops elitism that seems to be rampant these days gets to me. Especially when I'm a paying customer who prefers the Belgians. 


Last week my wife had a clerk ask her in a very disinterested voice as she was checking out if she'd found everything okay. You know the voice. Jenny said, no, actually she'd been looking unsuccessfully for some more beers from the Unibrew (my spelling) brewery in Chambly, Quebec, then asked if they had more in stock that she'd missed. Unibrue makes some fantastic beers (my favorite of theirs is Fin du Monde). The clerk just gave her a surly stare and said, "That'll be $13.97." She never even answered her question. From what we've heard from others, this kind of service is fairly typical there. So, Colonial, they're good at buying beer but awful at selling it. If you know what you want, then my advice is to go in, make your choice, buy it quickly and just engage the staff as little as possible. If only they had self check out.



Although Colonial appears to hate their customers, Jenny did manage to find one bottle of Maudite (French for "Damned"), a Chambly beer that I love and that she got me for my birthday. Springhill Wine & Spirits in North Little Rock didn't have it and didn't appear to know it too well at first. However, another one of the clerks did--one of their self-professed beer nerds--and said he thought it'd been recently discontinued, but he'd look to see if they could order some. We had a good conversation, and this particular member of the staff really knew his stuff. He even seemed to enjoy talking to me about beer. I know some things, but he appeared to know more, and not in an annoying competitive way. Hell, I want the salesman to know more about the product than I do.  Many of the beers were posted with their quality rating helpfully on a shelf tag underneath, and the selection was good. It's a large store. It's stock of wines and liquor appeared to be ample. We'll be back, I'm sure.


Popatop on University does not have the selection of the either two. It's my preferred local though because, well, it's local, the closest decent liquor store to our house. The diversity of its beer stock may not be up to Colonial or to Springhill, but it is a good one. They've crammed a lot into a store that once was a gas station. The building has been added on to in order to make room for its surprisingly big wine and liquor room. Staff are fairly knowledgeable, volunteered help (unlike Colonial) and even kind of funny. I went in on a Friday afternoon, so the manager was prepping for the weekend rush. Clearly, he had been in the business a while because he had that sort of casual confidence that comes naturally to someone who has put in the time. Owner Manager Man may not have been a beer geek but he seemed to have a strong, broad knowledge of all the stock. Each of the folks at Springhill seemed to have a niche, which is fine, too.


Back to the beer though. A beer snob like me still was able to find some interesting stuff at Popatop. First, they even have Gulden Draak, a favorite Belgian of mine that's hard to find. They also had a good mix of premium and craft beers, enough variety to draw me back again. Here's how I rate all three.


Ratings: Springhill Wine & Spirits — A-; Popatop — B+; Colonial — C+.



Springhill Wine & Spirits, 4281 E. McCain Blvd., (501) 945-5153

Popatop, 1901 S. University Ave., (501) 663-3276. They have a North Little Rock location but I haven't been there. http://www.popatopbottleshop.com/


Colonial Wines & Spirits, 11200 W. Markham St. (501) 223-3120

Those are the three main places I've tried in town so far. What am I missing? If you've got any great Little Rock area liquor store tips, I'm all beers. I mean ears. Again, we'll follow up and update the blog as our experience widens and deepens.