It’s finally open. After weeks of curiosity and voyeuristic speculation, the Healthy Spirits liquor store has opened at 249 Cortland, inside the former Chuck’s Grocery space.
The opening of a liquor store would not typically warrant much attention, but Healthy Spirits is not a typical boozemonger; The new Cortland branch is the third outpost in the Healthy Spirits family, which is regarded as one of the City’s more esteemed purveyors of whiskey and agave spirits.
Store manager Nate Breed brings Bernalwood the 411, and extends an invitation to a special grand opening sale on Saturday, Nov. 28:
We’ve now officially opened Healthy Spirits Cortland.
So we are absolutely thrilled to be a part of the Bernal Heights community, and we look forward to what we can add to the neighborhood. Our first shop was founded in 1998 in the Castro District, so we’ve had about 17 years to perfect and evolve who we are and what we do. Our main areas of expertise are beer, whiskey and agave (tequila and mezcal), but everything we carry is hand-selected and extremely quality-focused.
One of our most important goals is consumer education. We strive to have the most knowledgeable and dedicated staff that can make beer and spirits consumption into an immersive, informative and exciting experience. This notion over the years has helped us provide great customer service, but it also breeds an environment that’s accessible for both the novice and connoisseur alike.
Another chance for education lies in our Beer, Bourbon and Agave Clubs, that feature advanced monthly selections with detailed write-ups and interviews with the distillers and brewers themselves. The clubs come with an awful lot of perks, including discounts, first shot at limited releases and occasional free tickets to beer and spirit events. We also strongly believe in supporting local breweries and distilleries while seeking out the esoteric and saving a special place for the classics. It’s important for us to not only understand how something is made and what it tastes like, but also where it’s made and by who.
Anyway that’s Healthy Spirits in a nut shell. And we’d like to extend a special invitation to all your Bernalwood readers to attend our Grand Opening Celebration on Small Business Saturday November 28th at 11am.
We will be giving away free swag all day and having some unbelievable sales: 10 to 40% off everything in the shop. We’ll also be raffling off the right to buy extremely rare bottles of whiskey like Pappy Van Winkle, Buffalo Trace Antique, Four Rose Limited 2015 and St George Single Malt the first 5 hours, and putting other rare and vintage beer and whiskies on the shelf when the doors open. Come early, as the best deals and rarest selections tend to go fast.
Store hours are:
Monday-Thursday: 11am to 10pm
Friday-Saturday: 11am to 11pm
Sunday: 11am to 9pmSee you at the shop!
Nate
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Bernalwood 
Great, a chain liquor store… just what Bernal needs… what’s next a Starbucks?
I wish we had measures in place like the Mission District to stop chains from taking over the neighborhood and making Bernal generic like every other commercial strip in SF.
I guess with high rents, it’s only a matter of time before mom-and-pop locally-owned and run stores will be a matter of history.
For me, this is a sad day in Bernal’s history.
To be fair it’s not very chain like. It’s a local sf business with two other shops.
Regarding a “chain,” it seems that observation was made in jest…More pause may be due on the grounds that it’s a liquor store, albeit with propaganda fit for today’s Bernal, though just barely; a liquor store in Bernal is still a liquor store, regardless of how grass-fed, artisanal, shabby chic the offerings are. We saw how pleasant such places were to have around Precita Park (well, if you were around even a decade ago, you did). Is it the nature of the place or of the times? We shall see.
Popped in for a look a couple of days ago. The whiskey and tequila selection is outstanding, and the beers are pretty special too, though myself I tend to just drink six packs of good microbrewery ale, and these guys are more about the big bottles of hyper expensive connoisseur stuff when it comes to beer. All in all a great upgrade on the average corner liquor store. They are going to overlap a bit with he nice folks down at epicurean trader on the whiskey and beer selection though.
Now if only the cheapo beer and liquor store down at the corner of Cortland and Mission would reopen, to restore some balance to the Force!
I now have to go all the way down to Bayshore to buy Four Loko. Maybe I can get them to carry it.
What a great store! Still a little bitter that I didn’t win the Pappy in the raffle, but there’s always next time 😉 Nate was an absolute fountain of information about mezcal (we were trying to pick out a gift for a friend) and we walked away feeling like we really learned a lot about the agave growing techniques and terrior. An awesome collection and a very knowledgeable staff!
Welcome to the neighborhood Healthy Spirits!! This place is a total gem when it comes to finding the quality, hard to find booze. My first trip was awesome and I ended up with some great beer and felt the level of knowledge from Nate and Eli(pictured with hat above) was second to none. Looking forward to trying the famous hummus and much more delicious beer
Oh, that’s Eli? I wish I could edit my comment above! It was Eli who helped with the mezcal. Todd, a little photo captioning would be good!! 😉
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