Madrid’s best wine shop

One of the oldest—and, I think, one of the best—wine shops in Madrid is the family-owned Bodega Santa Cecilia. The shop got its start in 1922 when Pedro Santa Cecilia Munoz ran a somewhat traditional Madrid bodega but really took off in 1968 when Pedro’s son opened the first self-service wine shop in Spain.
“Back in the 20s, the wine wasn’t sold in bottles but just in casks and you brought your own bottle,” Pedro’s granddaughter, Mayte, told me when I stopped in the other day asking for her opinion on the best Madrid wines. “Later my father opened the first supermarket for wine in Spain. He had the idea of doing only high quality products but always with a very good price. This is a shop that people come to from all over Spain because of the quality of the wine.”