I used to buy wines from the D & M Imports portfolio of excellent small, regional, hand-crafted local French wines years ago when I worked at the Mayflower Wines & Spirits with Michael Downey, Sidney Moore, Iris, Leon, Larry, John Taylor, Moe Parzoe and many, many more excellent people. We at the Mayflower Wines & Spirits were a village, too. Village-to-village, that's how it worked and that's still how it works at least for me, even today as I continue to manage the wine department ( have now for ten years at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits, 3423 Connecticut Avenue N.W. Washington D.C. 20008 Tel : 202-363-4265 sales@clevelandparkwine.com www.clevelandparkwine.com, facebook at : clevelandparkwine ).
Yesterday my family and I were invited by Barry Diamond over to his house to enjoy a brunch-lunch time/meal extraordinaire. I do not think that any of the three of us ( my wife and my son and me ) had any idea what a wondrous food spread that Barry would unroll for us all from the very best ingredients in foods today from breads and pastries, coffee, cheeses, meats, etcetera. It boggled the imagination and the senses and I think we all relaxed immediately and our smiles grew and our contentment enlarged and our eyes marvelled time and time and time again followed quickly by our noses that had us stopping and smelling and wanting to eat and wax poetic about how just grand life was for the four of us here in northern Virginia just about now.
Besides enjoying all of this over a five-hour period of time we also had a grand tour of the house and the street that he lives on. Roberta Flack used to live several houses down from his and we walked through her yard and down to her pool and saw her music room and everyone welcomed us because we were with Barry with open arms. It felt pretty damned special to me and I announced to Barry at least twice that I had no idea on earth how special this Sunday was going to be with him, my wife and my son. Wow, this was magical and wondrous and of course all the memories of D & M Imports and the times that we had spent here all came rushing and tumbling and bursting forth onto the foremost landscape of my mind and imagination and fantasy just as if they had happened yesterday : bright and fresh and clear as many Kodak moments if not even better that that! Thanks Barry.
Of course D & M Imports stands for Diamond and Mellot of Barry and Kathleen Diamond and Philippe Mellot of Sarlat, France where Philippe owned the Hotel De La Madelaine back then ( was it's chef as well ) and was also the Mayor of Sarlat, too : all in one so to speak : beaucoup a faire, n'est ce pas vrai mes amis?!?
Et bien sur both Kathleen were busy back then as well being the owners of the Language Learning Enterprise Language School based then in Washington D.C. as well as Barry being an active and practicing lawyer. We were all busy, really. Trust me : fun , days of dreams and growth and possibilities with wines as the slate was still pretty clean with very little computer or Internet or wine critics, points and scores given, etcetera. It was still then largely about wine and realizing one's personal dreams to own a winery and less about selling units and boxes with points and scores and artificial, pumped-up/spoon-fed hype and press and business to grow the numbers each and every year... I liked it : it was all so much more human back in the days of the D & M Imports in the mid eighties when they would come to me with a wonderful Fronsac from Bordeaux, some of the PERE CABOCHE Chateauneuf-Du-Pape and Cotes Du Rhone ( never did meet these French owners ), Bergerac's CHATEAU COURT-LES-MUTS ( lovely husband and wife with beautiful roses growing at the ends of many of their rows of vines - I loved that, still have pictures of it ), the Cahors from DIDIER SAINT PARNAC ( that was run by two brothers that I went and met and visited with ) and many, many more. I can't remember all of them just now. I visited many of them and enjoyed myself immensely driving through the countryside with Philippe and sometimes on my own.
It was also the days when people were enacting for themselves the meal that took place in the fabulous movie called : " Babette's Feast ". We did our own at Jeanne McNaughton's home and Martha and All Moss , part-owners of the D& M Imports came, too.
As I said it was all a village and everyone chipped in. Many times Al would have to leave his job as a teacher and come and make deliveries and often he came in his best shoes and I would kid him about that as at the time I found it quite amusing.
WE had fun and I want to write more about all of this. Here it is only the very beginning. Stay-tuned for more. Cheers, TONY
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