The Best Wine, Spirits & Beer Shopping in Rome

Les Vignerons sells naturally and traditionally made wines, as well as domestic and imported craft beers. Owners Antonio Marino and Marisa Gabbianelli love unique wines with district personalities that embody terroir and are passionate about their stock. While most bottles are from Italy, there are also healthy dose of French and Slovenian wines available.

Le Bon Bock Shop, like its nearby sister bar and restaurant, Le Bon Bock Café, caters to whiskey connoisseurs and collectors who cross Rome—and even the Italian peninsula—to browse its catalog of over 450 labels. The small shop, which is crowded with liquor bottles and whiskey paraphernalia, also sells beers from Scotland and the U.K.

Years before the craft beer boom consumed Rome in 2009, Irish immigrant John Nolan was already stocking the shelves and fridges of his eponymous liquor store near San Giovanni with domestic and imported craft brews. In addition to beer, Johnny’s Off License also sells wines, liquor and a nice selection of whiskeys.

A short walk from Stazione Termini, Rome’s main train terminal, Domus Birrae sells and distributes craft beer from Italy and abroad. The selections are constantly changing due to high turnover, but expect to find at least a few labels each from Italy’s top brewers, as well as a sampling of Danish and American breweries. There is also a section at the back of the shop dedicated to home brewing equipment and materials.

The Costantini family’s wine shop, which sits across from the Italian Palace of Justice in the prestigious Prati district, is Rome’s largest. The ground level entrance is crowded with liquor bottles and drinking accessories, but the 8,600-square-foot cellar below houses 4,000 labels and hundreds of sprits from the old and new worlds. The staff is rarely warm and fuzzy—the cause of working in a dark cellar in sunny central Rome, perhaps—but all are immensely knowable about the vast stock.

The Trimani family opened their first wine shop in central Rome back in 1821 and have been in their current location, near Stazione Termini, since 1876. Titans in the wine trade, the Trimanis have strong ties to Italy’s top producers and frequently host tastings led by winemakers from all over the country.