Just Now Seeing A Picture Of Michael Downey On The DOWNEY Selections Facebook Page That Made Me Think Of Way-Back-When I Worked With Michael & Knew Him Best In The Early To Mid Eighties @ The Mayflower Wines & Spirits @ Corner Of New Hampshire Avenue & M Street N.W. Washington D.C. Cheers Michael!

Nice to see this photo of you Michael : we sure did spend a whole lot of time together at the Mayflower Wines & Spirits selling a full array of wines and that is where I got my first real taste for Italian wine and that's where my love of Italian wine really began to form. Those incredible pictures back in the tasting room of the Mayflower transported me there every time as we would sell so many fabulous wines from FOSSI, FRANCO FURLAN, VIETTI, ISOLE E OLENA, The Monte Carlo white, the Pittigliano Veneto white fifths and magnums, ... with Andrea Fossi, Alessandro Furlan and Elisabette Carado ( is that the spelling ) of Vietti would come to work with us and learn English and the business and fill us with hope and promise and cheer with their unbridled youth and attractive personalities and love of wine. Then there was Michael the photographer friend of yours that took the pictures that hung in the back tasting room that rode a motorcycle, Steve the owner of the guitar store, Lucie Morton the viticulturalist, Jim and John Crouch of the ALLEGRO Vineyard, Rob DeFord of the BOORDY winery, Ham Mowbray of the MONTBRAY Maryland winery, Janet Gallaway that gave wine classes and worked at the Robert Mondavi winery with Joel Peterson of RAVENSWOOD Vineyard, your various California friends that made wine there - names I cannot remember now, Allen Krasner that did some of our excellent displays in the store, David that did those incredible wine-tastings for customers in the back of the store, Bob Parker, Jr that shopped with us, Burton Anderson of the VINO Italian wine book, the various Checkers that you would grace us with from bright pink to many other pastel colors, too, Robert Chadderdon that we sold the first of in Washington D.C. with a display of his BILLECART SALMON N.V. Brut in fifths and magnums in those heavy dark wooden bins on the lower floor with a bin next to theirs filled with the then-unknown/ untried NINO FRANCO " Rustico " Prosecco from Valdobbiadene, Veneto, Italy, the bottles of the KRUG Grand Annee for sale at $24.99 a bottle, the FOSSI Chianto Classicos going back to the early vintages of 1958 and 1959 : The TRENEL Creme de Cassis, all the journalists that loved and shopped with us, the Arnold & Porter crew of lawyers, ... your energy, vitality, friendly and quick greetings, your tennis shoes, your curly mustache, ... all the staff like Iris, Leon, Larry Jennings, Moe Parzoe, John Taylor, Karen the book keeper, ... so many things to remember Michael, the most important being for me that you once gave me a job opportunity to work there at the Mayflower Wines & Spirits and to grow with you and the others and to carve our nitches and to do what we could then as it was once a largely white canvas that we had to work with before the internet and the ipods and iphones and everything being available so instantaneously like it is today. Cheers to you , cheers to all the good times we had and all the good things we did that included so many people here and abroad and which touched our lives as profoundly as they did ours. A win-wine situation for all. Happy Father's Day to you one day late, Brennan and Shannon are pretty amazing individuals thanks to you and thanks to Peggy. TONY

This is what I wrote above and just copied here as I want people to be able to see this and to read it and to be able to fill in the spaces and blanks where they can with their own stories and memories. This is just a start, just the beginning. So many people have their own stories and memories, it would be nice if some of them would include some of them here in the Comments section below. Happy father's Day Michael on day late!   TONY