An interesting discussion about purchasing wine in Quebec has popped up in Chowhound in the past couple of days, and if you travel to Quebec and like to buy wine, you might find it worth reading.

SAQ is Quebec’s provincial liquor monopoly; you can buy some wine elsewhere, in grocery stores and dépanneurs, but it’s only a small amount compared to what SAQ moves every year.

The conversation thread on Chowhound adds some depth to my knowledge and also provides some options for getting access to a wider variety of wine. For tourists, this isn’t optimal because it entails ordering wine in advance and then picking it up at a SAQ outlet. If you have friends in the province, perhaps they can do this for you.

A couple other observations that took us a SAQ visit or two to figure out:

• There are different kinds of SAQ outlets. The Wikipedia entry is helpful here. We discovered through trial and error that Sélection and Signature offer the kinds of wines and the selection that we desire. Express sells a lot of popular wines; it’s a good fall back if it’s the only SAQ outlet near you.
• We’re constantly reminded of the near invisibility of US wines outside the United States. The first time you walk into SAQ and see a couple of shelves devoted to California wines, and the shelves are filled with Beaulieu, Bogle, Mondavi, Fetzer and other such wine producers, you can get quite a jolt. California wines are world class, but finding anything but commodity California wine outside the US takes an effort. That said, there’s often excellent French and Italian wine. So if you “retune” your expectations, you’re likely to leave happy, with some excellent wine under your arm.