I do love what I do with my life and much of my time. I love bringing things together and welcoming most everyone and all their wines and other liquid alcohol libations and often getting one group of people waiting to see me taste what I am tasting. Why not? Let me share in what I am enjoying/experiencing : it's the right thing for me to do. Most people are thrilled to be included and this hopefully adds to their experience with me at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits ( 3423 Connecticut Avenue N.W. Washington D.C. 20008, Tel:202-363-4265 sales@clevelandparkwine.com www.clevelandparkwine.com ) where I manage the wine department and find as many ways as I can to make wine and wine-enjoyment more accessible to our customers.
This day here happened in January 2010 sometime and it is now Monday, February 8th, 2010 and I am here on my day-off in northern Virginia having already been outside in my pyjamas and coat ( to give our dog a chance to run with our neighbor's dog Orion ) speaking to both my neighbors. The sun was blazing above and the skies above as the bluest of baby blues and it just felt grand to be in our cul-de-sac. I was not cold at all and really not a bit self-conscious either.
Snow is everywhere around now as I type this and I am grateful to be off today as it is hard to get around in a car with so many roads still covered with most of the 25-30 inches of snow that fell continuously on Friday night and into Saturday up until 5 PM or so ... it's beautiful and I am now reading more of Julia Child's book of being in France and feeling so inspired/fired her collaborative writing. She minces no words and is brutally honest and I love it : really I do. I cheer each time I read one of her utterly honest comments on people and places and more ...
But let's get back to this day in January when so many of our local reps came to see both me and Chris Barker our new " wine personality " that is coming from 2-years' experience at Dean & DeLuca.
We tasted a number of wines as you can see here in these mostly artsy photos that I have taken and had the chance to download here for you all to enjoy.
I love starting with the first picture of the bottle of MIOLO Brazilian sparkling wine and the label and the color and the sight of so many bubbles. It speaks to me especially today here on a snow-white/sun's-shine blasting off the white surface and heading back up through the bluest of baby blue skies to it's original sun source! Yes! ... I also end the pictures here with more MIOLO being poured and bubbling up through my Reidel champagne flute ...
And so buttressed in between all these shots of MIOLO sparkling wine are the many pictures of CHARLES KRUG ( from four different reds including a Merlot, a Cabernet Sauvignon, a red blend as well as the " Generation " 2005, too ; a Chardonnay and a Sauvignon Blanc - the full arsenal I believe or at least close to it ); CAMELIA CELLARS 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon I believe from California ; VIDIGAL 2007 Vinhos Regionales Vinho Tinto Reserve dry red from Portugal ; and the CHATEAU DU TRIGNAN red 2006 Cotes Du Rhone from France. Of course there were more on this day : they are just not downloaded here for me to remember and speak of. I may include them in a later blog so always stay-tuned for more updates.
I was very happy to try the full array of the Napa Valley, California CHARLES KRUG wines of Peter Mondavi ( brother of Robert Mondavi ). It was a pleasure to try them all with Chris and our rep for CHARLES KRUG : Chris Pells. I liked a number of the wines and that was good news for me personally. I especially liked the 2008 Sauvignon Blanc as I do not think of Sauvignon Blanc from Napa Valley much though there seems to be a trend for much more now coming from there along with the excellent Cabernet Sauvignon's.
That's the fun part of this business for me : even after almost forty years drinking wine and thirty years on the actual business of educating the public about it that I have never lost my passion or love and enthusiasm for it. I am always learning something new : seeing something for the very first time and tasting something that catches my fancy and raises my brows and tweaks my curiosity to look and taste more slowly and evaluate more carefully.
The snow is brilliant and grand and as I worked on our gutters out back where lots of water has frozen with magnificent icicles of all varying sizes, shapes and thicknesses - fusing into one often, rippling - like the being in the Lurray Caverns in West Virginia is it, or Virginia ?!? Anyway, I could use now some of the MIOLO Bubbly followed by a glass of the 2006 CHATEAU DU TRIGNON ( mis en bouteille au chateau-estate-bottled ) red Cotes du Rhone as I await the lovely lentil soup and the grilled cheese sandwich that my wife is kindly making me now after all my hard work-travail-trabajo outside. The snow got all over me and I loved it, really : the thin sprays of fine-grained white snow- powder-like- Wow! And the brilliant blue skies and the sun's shine all reflecting off the snow white skin of our backyard now. I could enjoy a glass of the CHARLES KRUG Cabernet Sauvignon from California's Napa Valley. I could enjoy a glass outside even if it were not for it only being 1:38 PM now. But hey, I'm off and at home and it's okay!
I might do just that, too. I might open a bottle right now from my personal stash and enjoy it once my grilled cheese sandwich and lentil soup are ready. I'll have a glass with my wife and daughter upstairs as I look out onto the snow everywhere. I do not think that they will join me but that's okay. Then I will take a glass outside to survey my domaine. After all, I am the lord of my domaine here in northern Virginia on this wondrous white, sparkling, glistening afternoon as I contemplate these wines I tried maybe a month ago or so?
I liked the " Generation " 2005 Napa Valley very much and I will speak to Chris about buying some bottles for the store. We can, however, sell much more of the excellent 2008 CHARLES KRUG Sauvignon Blanc and the Cabernet Sauvignon as they are of course more affordable. I will also speak with our local rep Jean Gagliolo, Frenchman and past cooking chef here in Washington D.C. ( at La Nicoise where I first met him and he cooked for us at our wine-food-pairing dinner with Donna and Michel the owners ). If all goes well we will have some more CHARLES KRUG at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits in March.
All the wines are interesting for different reasons and Chris and I did enjoy the CAMELLIA CELLARS 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon from California as well as the VIDIGAL 2007 Vinho Tinto dry red fro, Portugal that Matt our local rep from Sopex brought to us along with the sparkling MIOLO.
" Ready to go! " my wife calls out to me about my soup and sandwich being ready for me now. I will go enjoy both and perhaps that glass of wine, too. Cheers, and stay-tuned for more. In the meantime enjoy these photos and bits of text and story and comments of the wines ... TONY
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