So here's what happened with that.

Okay:
Remember how on March 4th, earlier this year, I was blogging about beer? There was an article in the LA Times about the growing trend of people cellaring beer like people have been doing with wine all along. This was the photo, a picture of some guy crawling under his house to tend to his aging beer. I wrote at the time, "Oh, say, you don't really need to crawl under your house for this sort of thing. We have lockers. They're dark, they're cold, and they'll save you a few loads of laundry."

So here's what happened with that.

Izzy, the gentleman in this picture stolen from the LA Times and featured in that article, wandered into The Cave a bit back looking for a locker. I didn't recognize him all vertical like he was, but when I started talking about the article he very casually clued me in to my oversight, that a virtual star was among us. Very Cool.

Izzy brought with him some good energy, because it seems like on that one weekend I rented lockers out to three new beer people and they did not know each other. New energy, nice kids, happy to have them here. We have about half a dozen beer collectors here now, some young, some older; it's a nice mix.

My tenure here is coming up on two years, and aside from the occasional descaling I need to undergo, life as a troglodyte is good. When I first took the job I was in DTLA and someone told me I should go talk to Adam the Wine Guy just around the corner. So I did. At the time Adam was cellaring in LA proper. I wanted Adam because he has a rare, positive, burn-it-to-the-ground and toss-it-to-the-universe energy, and I like his style. Whenever possible, Cave's should have good energy; the bats appreciate it. It was a good day when he joined us.

Recently, Adam was featured in LA Weekly's Best of LA issue. Tom Leykis, former shock jock, and Adam host the weekly radio show "The Tasting Room with Tom Leykis" on KGIL 1260 AM, Thursdays @ 8pm.

Hmmm, thought this particular troglodyte, what if....So on Wednesday three of our resident beer-heads, Izzy of course along with Alex and Richard, gathered in Hollywood to tape what I think became three episodes, I was told, what with all the beer flowing. I hear The Cave may have been mentioned a few times, so thank you to Adam for that one.

But no one told me the first of the three shows aired this past Thursday (locally, over the weekend elsewhere), so here's the link to it. Tune in Thursdays @ 8 for the next installments.

Aren't Caves fun?

The day there was no air conditioning.

It's true, it happened a week or so ago. Right after bragging about our stellar AC, I came into work and there was none. NADA. And really, what kind of misguided troglodyte would reveal this so publicly?

Point 1: I got a call from a potential customer one day, and in the course of the conversation this came out of my mouth: "You're wine matters to me more than your business," and in that moment I realized that was true.

Two things here. One, when I first started working here I was given the gift of a 2002 de Bertoli Noble One. I've had wine and I've had good wine, but when I tasted this - as I put it to the good gentleman who offered it - had I not tasted it I could have never otherwise imagined it. I think it was part of his evil plan all along, because in that moment it became very clear to me that my job was about one thing: allowing this.

Point 2. The Cave does not have a backup system, nor do most of the wine storage facilities I've visited (but this place does, fyi). What The Cave does have is our subterranean location. When I first started here I went to pretty much every wine storage facility in Los Angeles, and let me tell you, there were places I was standing in charging double and triple what we charge, surrounded by windows, the sun beating down on them, and all I was thinking was, wow, if the AC goes out here the wine is toast. (One place had a skylight, was full of wine, and had no AC at all. When I commented on that, the gentleman was very casual about their remodeling process that had been going on for a while.)

Point 3. Everything breaks down, your car, your body, everything. The point is what comes next. Or, as Tiger Woods has taught me, it's not getting into the sand trap that matters, because even he gets into them; it's how you get out if them that separates the men from the boys, or something like that.

Our AC is on a quarterly preventative maintenance schedule. I know because four time a year Anthony calls me at 5:30 a.m. to make sure I'm awake because he'll be here in half an hour. But after two hours on it this particular day, he informed me he'd have to come back the next day with the necessary part. Over a hundred degrees outside and I was going to have to wait another day. I promise you, I was stressing it.

Mid morning the next day, after we were up and running again, Anthony and I were looking at the thermometers in the rooms. Twenty-four hours in a hundred degree temperatures, and they read (drum roll, please...) sixty-two. I thought it was sixty four, but Anthony said that's because I was short and looking up at it, that it really was 62.

I know extreme temperature fluctuation can shrink and expand corks, and have read about an acceptable four or five degree variation. I'm not sure on the details on this, or the verity; I really just don't know the weight of the moment versus the whole. All I know is this is what happened. I also know it can't last longer than twenty four hours, that this place is really well insulated, so if it's going to happen anywhere (and it will, it does, they just don't tell you about it), The Cave is a whole lot if silver lining in that particular cloud.

The unsolved Cave mystery.

One of my first official actions as The Cave's new resident troglodyte was to go through any empty lockers to make sure they were clean and rent-ready. Back in the depths of this maze of a Cave, I saw inside one of the lockers this newspaper on the back wall, remnants of the funny pages glued upside down. I fetched the flashlight and after a bit of hunting I found the date: November-something, 1929 (I'm pretty sure).


Opposite the date reads the headline, ' $10,000,000 Talkie Film Firm Created. ' Sadly, I can't seem to find more details on that one.

If you look on the original blueprints, that room was once either the service room or the janitor's room - they were right next to each other and that locker sort of straddles where they met. All I know is one day, for reasons I'll never know, someone glued those funny pages to the wall, upside down, and in that simple act left a small mystery behind. The new renter of that locker is aware of the legacy they are now tending, and that mystery will continue.

Old Rasputin

Remember Miss Cleo? The Voo-doo practicing, Jamacian, psychic reader who's name was actually Youree and who was from Los Angeles and who eventually settled all the lawsuits for a fraction of the thirteen million she made being Miss Cleo? Poor Rasputin, all he ever got for his efforts was murdered.

One of my beer guys came in yesterday (more on him another post) and we were chatting about the whole fear of wine thing a couple of posts back, a post I was hesitant about but which he appreciated nonetheless. Mind you, my winos are not even vaguely pretentious, indeed, the whole reaon I dig them is their very lack of that sort of thing. It's the wine that is the trepidation. More on that another post, too.

He was asking me what kind of beer I drink (when I occasionally do), and he mentioned one in particular. After work I went to the store and noticed this, Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout. I don't know if it's the one he was talking about, but it's the one I got and the one I'm about to comment on.

Okay:
Twice a year something other worldy occurs in Los Angeles, and that is the blooming of orange blossoms (February) and night-blooming jasmine (late summer). There is still enough of this scattered in our suburban sprawl to rise and collect in the dead of night air, and it is a dead of night air that seduces and intoxicates like nothing else.

Last year, late one night, I was on my bicycle in Silverlake coming from downtown and heading back to the 'dale. It was a beautiful and quiet late February night. I'd just taken the fork off Sunset onto Griffith Park Blvd, and when you hit the curve there, soon after, you get this nice little momentary overview of LA. On this particular night, in this quiet, that curve gave way to the lights and hills of LA, and with it came the waft of orange blossoms, washing over me, strong and sweet and seductive, silent sirens in the dark.

With the addition of coffee undertones, this beer is a lot like that night. Rasputin redeemed.

A/C: the key to happiness.

Joel is into our air conditioning. "You have to take a picture of this!" he says
today, carrying this out of one of his twelve lockers. It's a 1979 Pommard Grands Epenots. He was taking it for a friend's wedding. But the wine wasn't what he was showing me, no, it was the fill level.

Joel has commented on our air conditioning before. He talks about how if everyone is bringing the exact same wine to a tasting, his bottle always tastes the youngest and most intact. I think, like many collectors, Joel has his wine at a few cellars. If something goes horribly wrong at one place, you don't lose your entire collection. Also, storing it in a multitude of smaller lockers minimizes damage due to earthquake (which is a bit of an active subject).

"That bottle has been in there since the mid-eighties and look at that fill level and color." So I did. Then I took his word for it. Then I took this picture of it. Frankly it's a bit charming that a fill level can make someone so excited.

The Cave Wine Storage...good air conditioning, good fill levels, good color, happy customers.

Five Faces of Four.

"You're open today?"

Yeah, why not? The good stuff doesn't happen until it gets dark enough for fireworks. The hot dogs are in the fridge for when I get home. But I think the guy who asked me that will have a possibly better evening, though I neglected to ask him what condiments he'd be putting on his dogs to go with this bottle. You're right, probably not his menu.

Neither of us could read the artist's name, though, not even with glasses. It was, in 1979, Domoto Hisao. Never heard of him, but not for want of his achievements. Japanese born, lived in Paris awhile, well shown and well awarded for his work.

Also in the news today: Takeru Kobayashi was arrested at the annual Coney Island Fourth of July hot dog eating contest. Also from Japan, "The Tsunami" perfected the form that kept him unchallenged for years, until Joey "Jaws" Chestnut mimicked him and then defeated him three years in a row. This year Kobayashi didn't compete. He refused to sign a contract with Major League Eating because he wanted to remain a free-agent, compete in independent eating contests. With a last minute change of heart, though, he went to Coney Island, hung in the crowd during the contest (won by Chestnut), and then was arrested trying to crash the gate and get onto the stage after. Serious hot dog drama, who'da thunk?

What makes America great? Hebrew Nationals, Japanese art, Kabuki at Coney Island, French wine and a spectacular show courtesy of China.

Eggs.

I could happily subsist on eggs, bread (butter), and tea every meal, every day. My palate, much like my brain capacity, is, for better or worse, a simple affair. I struggle with wine because of this, because wine seems like a pleasure of riches, that it need be paired with like food to be appreciated seriously. So that whenever I think of having wine with dinner I often decide not to because the meal is too unworthy of what wine is about. Also, good wine scares me. There's an innate immediate reverence about it, and a sort if Emperor's New Clothes pressure in it, in wine in general.

Every once in a while, though, I'm feeling a little bit randy, rebellious, and throw caution to the wind. Don't those Italian country food artisans eat simple-albeit-really good food? What's better than that? Nothing. (Quiet Cave day; I'm both asking and answering my own questions.)

So when I had eggs for dinner the other night - lightly scrambled in garlic-dill-butter and lots of black pepper, and coaxed to doneness on medium-low heat - I lived dangerously and opened a recent acquisition, a 1980 HMR Pinot Noir. One of the building owners (who both built The Cave and cellars here) gave it to me recently. My response was, don't give me the good stuff; I can't take the pressure.

HMR, (Hoffman Mountain Ranch) was a short lived winery in Paso Robles. They were the first Pinot Noir grapes to be planted in the region, but early success turned to eventual failure and by the early eighties the vineyard was abandoned. After a decade it was revived under the label Adelaida Cellars.

I was instructed to use a two-pronged cork puller and to let it breath at least an hour, both of which I did. It was my first try at the two-prong pull, no idea what to do, but it worked. Third try. Cork completely intact.

There was no decadent, velvety seduction here, no, just a clean, easy, pleasant glass of wine. Also, it went really well with the eggs. Then I was reading about Pinot Noir and that's what it does, it goes well with a variety of things, so I was a fortunate Emperor and didn't get called out on this one.