VIDEO: Vince and Joe's Wine Station Takes Grocery Shopping to Higher Level

What could make your last-minute trip to the grocery store on a Friday afternoon a little more pleasurable? Perhaps an appointment with some friends at the grocery store’s self-serve wine station would do the trick?

What’s a wine station you ask? It’s a digital wine bar where customers can taste a one, two or four ounce sample of one of the hundreds of wines offered at .

Sommelier Ted Ross said the Shelby Township market is one of the only stores in the state to have a wine station.

The wine station gives shoppers the ability to sample any bottle of wine in the store before committing to buy it, according to Ross.

Ross said using the wine station is simple, just buy a prepaid wine station card at the customer service desk, swipe and pour.

When Patch visited the wine station, Ross was featuring a four–ounce taste of a $129 bottle of Tommaso Bussola Amarone for $29. Tastes of less expensive bottles can start at $2.

Since the market bought the wine station two years ago, wine enthusiasts began lining the market’s prepared food bar for some brick oven pizza and wine samples after work.

Ross said several groups of women regularly meet on Thursday and Friday afternoons at the wine station to ease the burden of the weekly grocery shopping chores.