Bottle 501

Recently discovered this very much hidden bottle shop. It is located on top of a mattress firm in an upscale shopping strip. To my surprise they had a great selection of bottles and impressive bar for a bottle shop.
The bartender was attentive and knowledgeable. She recommended the special of the day, $ 5 flights (mondays). Flights included 5 4oz pours equaling 20oz of unique craft beer for $ 5, not bad at all.
The music and entire environment was a bit too quiet for my tastes but that’s just being picky. There’s multiple couches and various seating areas if you bring your friends.
There’s also several nice automatic wine dispensers allowing you to walk in and have a glass of wine without human interaction.
My favorite thing about this place may be the fact that they encourage you to bring outside food in and they are directly beside a chipotle!
We had a couple flights and bought a couple reasonably priced bottles to take home and continue our buzz.

We love this place and feel fortunate it’s near us. Their tap beer selection is always changing. They often have brand reps in there willing to talk about their beer which I always enjoy. The staff is always really nice and fun to talk with. They have great specials. I only wish it was dog friendly!

So glad I found this place! It’s a quiant little bottle shop, hidden behind a mattress firm. I love the self-​serve «wine fountains» (aka wine on tap)! Wine and beer can be ordered in multiple sizes, perfect for tasting! The staff are knowledgeable and super friendly, even when we were having too much fun and stayed beyond closing time… I even found my long-​lost favorite beer that I haven’t been able to find served elsewhere — great beer and wine selection!

Come with friends today. Customer service here is amazing. The guys who helped me really knew their stuff and gave me some great recommendations based on what I was looking for, their personal experience, popularity at their store, as well as professional rankings. Well done.

You know how in the TV shows Friends and How I Met Your Mother, there’s always the bar that all your friends hang out at and you turn into an extension of your living room? Well, I’ve decided that this is going to be that bar for me.
The location, while a bit unconventional for a bar (on top of a Mattress Firm store), is convenient — right off ¹⁵⁄₅₀₁ in a plaza with PDQ, Chipotle, Jimmy Johns, Kroger, etc. Parking is extremely easy. The staff invited us to bring outside food in if we’d like, which I’ve yet to take advantage of, but can definitely see myself picking up some PDQ and then heading over to Bottle 501 to pair my fried chicken with wine from the wide variety of selections available in the wine fountains. On the note of the wine fountains — you can pay $ 25 for a card that you can use to access the wine fountains yourself without having to go up to the counter; after you use up the $ 25 in the card, you can reload it with whatever amount of money you want to put on it.
The atmosphere is casual, clean, and classy, the perfect place for young professionals to hang out after work. At the moment, it’s not super crowded, and I’m selfishly hoping that that will not change too much. It’s also fun to walk around the store and look at the wide variety of beers, ciders, and wine available. They also have some light snacks available in the store.

A great bottle shop for beer and wines, the weekly specials are a great deal and the crowd is diverse and welcoming when busy. The staff are friendly and are very nice when asking for recommendations. The establishment also has a bar inside so you can enjoy a pint while you walk around.
The taps change often and I like trying local selections as well as other good beers.
Staff encouraged me to bring in outside food which is AWESOME considering they are surrounded by food options. Jimmy Johns also will deliver to you while you are sitting at the bar if you are feeling lazy.

This is an outstanding bottle shop. The folks who run it are knowledgeable, friendly, welcoming, and exactly what we need more of. Given a choice of buying the same beer from them or that other place — these guys win hands down.

This is an interesting little place. It is a bottle shop that I don’t think you would ever see if you didn’t already know it exists. Once you finally find the location you walk upstairs and there you are. There are a few couches to hang out and a bar with stools.
A couple minuses are almost none of their product is refrigerated, so if you want to drink it soon that will be a problem. Also there is no outdoor area you can hang out in when the weather is nice.
A couple pluses are they have three dollar drafts every day. There was a mystery, a haw river and bull city cider offering that were just normally priced at 3 bucks. That’s a great deal. The people who work there have been always been very friendly (I freakin love Sam’s Quik Shop, but lets be honest, they don’t value friendly service) and it is a nice inviting space.
Overall a great place that I would frequent more often if I lived closer.

I am so excited to have a bottleshop in my neighborhood! My only questions is, «what took me so long to find them?» The answer is probably that they are somewhat difficult to locate (they are upstairs in the building across from PDQ) and the signage isn’t great. Apparently they aren’t a secret though, because it’s been busy every time I have gone in. The ambiance is really nice with large windows (although at the wrong time of day you get hit with some serious sun in your eyes) and beautiful light sconces. The selection isn’t as large as Sam’s but it’s bigger than other bottleshops in the area and has a solid selection of beer and wine. The best part are the beers (and a cider) on draft which are VERY reasonably priced and cheaper than what you would pay at most bars (and they have $ 3 Thirsty Thursdays as well). The only way this place could get better would be if they had a food truck (or one of the local restaurants would deliver) and if it was dog-​friendly. Bottle 501 is a great addition to the South Square area as it really is the only place in the area to grab a good, reasonably priced drink.

My boyfriend and I frequent many of the beer shops around the area and were very happy to see this new shop right in Durham!
This place is both bottle shop and bar with a big local emphasis. For the bar they have about 16 beers on tap, largely NC beers, and a pretty good selection of them too. However, during my visit they only had 1 sour on tap, so not too many sours if you’re a sour beer fan. They have specials on Monday for $ 5 flights! Oh and they do offer 5oz. pours! Yay!
If you prefer wine over beer, they do have self pour wine stations, though I am not a wine person and did not venture towards this area. I did notice they offer wine tastings on Saturday though! And ½ off wine stations Wednesdays.
Roaming around the store, the selection is pretty good, though not much different than what you would see in similar bottle shops in this area, such as Sam’s Bottle Shop, The Glass Jug, or Beer Study for instance. Again, I can’t speak to the wine selection.
After browsing, we sat down in one of their big comfy leather couches by the coffee table and played some Jenga. I really liked the ambience in here, luxurious and cozy with the dark leathers and warm woods throughout the space, mood lighting above really makes it.
I really enjoy a space that has seating so you can get together with your friends and play some games/​chat. For seating, there’s the bar and then there are about 3 small round tables, 1 large table, and then the central coffee table with couches. The coffee table has a chess set and maybe about 4 other board games. Not a very large selection, but you could easily bring your own. There are also some extra couches towards the back left of the store, though there are no tables flanking the couches here, so I found this to be a bit awkward.
All in all, I enjoyed my initial visit here and would love to come back with some friends.

Stopped by here a few times. Great craft beers and great staff. Fun place to sit and hang out!

This is a very nice space for a little upscale hooch shopping. They lean more heavily to specialty beers but also have a decent wine selection. There’s enough choice that everyone should be able to find something to get their drink on. The entrance is up a flight of stairs (there’s also an elevator for the physically challenged or the lazy) on the back corner of a section of a strip center, diagonally opposite the Chipotle that’s visible from 15 – 501. There are some leather sofas and other seating around TVs, as well as a fairly long bar set underneath a row of Moroccan-​style lighting fixtures featuring about 15 beers on tap. Initially it’s almost all NC beers, but the bartender told me they will be rotating the kegs with lots of varieties. They also have wine dispensers with a nice selection of varietals. If you’re drinking onsite, you have choices in the amounts – many of the beers are available in 5 oz., 9 oz., and 16 oz. pours and the wine taps also give you size options. The wine section is one of those deals where you purchase a reloadable card, then the machine deducts from it when you make your selections. They’re doing some regular specials now, including half-​price on the wine dispensers on Wednesdays, so I plan to go back and check it out. The place is clean, new, and upscale with a pleasant staff. It’s pretty much along the same lines as Sam’s Bottle Shop, except with more of a wine presence, and also closer to my house. Definitely worth checking out if you’re into the high-​end beer and wine scene.