Our Local Beer Scene – Bottles-n-Bins Liquors

This is the second post in Our Local Beer Scene series. Bottles-n-Bins Liquors in New Monterey.

When we moved back to the Monterey Peninsula in 1994, our first house was up on the hill in New Monterey. We liked the location because we could walk pretty much everywhere. It reminded us a lot of our neighborhood in Oakland that we were greatly missing.

Luckily, we didn’t have to sacrifice good beer too much because even back in the mid 1990s, our local bottle shop, Bottles-n-Bins, had a nice selection of craft beer.  And the owner, Vince, was always very friendly and welcoming, greeting us cheerily with “Hey Kids” every time we came in.

We moved to Seaside and then to Carmel Valley, so after a few years we didn’t spend much time over in the old neighborhood. We eventually stopped going to Bottles-n-Bins because it was just too out of the way.

Then sometime last year, a friend asked if we had stopped into Bottles-n-Bins recently. Answering in the negative, he said we had to go check it out. Curiosity piqued, we drove over there the very next day.

Vince still has a nice selection of craft beer, but what caught our attention were the racks of unique beers, most of them not available anywhere else on the Monterey Peninsula. Trappists, Belgians, and the rare and unique American beers were all under one roof. If it’s available in our area, Vince has it. It’s still a bit out of the way for us, but well worth the trip over.

However, one note of caution. If you are like us, you will leave Bottles-n-Bins much, much lighter in the pocket.

Bottles-n-Bins is easily located on the corner of Lighthouse and David Avenues, just up from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.