Happy New Year from The Cave.

I could post a video of Kenny G. doing Auld Lang Syne ... but this is so much better. So is most anything else. Party safely!

Merry Christmas, from Vern.

I called Vern this morning. He's wintering in beautiful, balmy Michigan. He was eager to hear how his favorite (and not so favorite...) winos were doing. He misses everyone here and wishes them a Merry Christmas.

Chris wondered why I didn't decorate for Christmas. "Because this is Geneva," I told him; "We're neutral." (Respite.)

Nick came in today from NYC. Originally from Glendale, he lived up in the bay area for a while before moving to NY. His collection was scattered between here and up north until his parents gathered it all up for him and dropped it off here last month. (Nice parents.) I was like - just throw it into a bunch of lockers and we'll figure it out. Today Nick figured it out. He managed to get three lockers down to two - which is why I didn't charge him for the interim. And when Jonathan came in later tonight with new deliveries, stressing over his space issues and his overwhelming options towards resolution - each loaded with unknown variables - it was like coaxing a man from the ledge to back inside where it's safe, calm, and where it will all work out. Because I'm not going to be like that about it; we'll take our time and figure out what the right answer is for you, your excess wine tucked away somewhere safe and secure until we can figure it out.


It takes an army to keep this building-Cave included-crawling along, and that army is Max, from El Salvador, and Freddy, from Guatemala.

From the Seattle Post Intellegencer:

"For many families, Christmas is tamalada time, the time to crowd into a fragrant kitchen to make tamales. Wrapped in corn husks or banana leaves and filled with anything from pork to pineapple to squash blossoms, the steamy corn dumplings are most delicious.

"But it is the process of making them with family and friends: the scooping, smearing, wrapping and tying, that makes tamales such an endearing food. Each tamal is swaddled with such care that in some parts of the Yucatan, it is referred to as 'the baby.'"

Freddy came in today, on his day off, to drop off these freshly made tamales from his family's kitchen. I confess, with all the generosity around here this season this was the one that got me. (I may have a little crush on Freddy.)

Yes, it has been a generous and giving season indeed, but it's not a requisite and not why I'm here. While Vern and I today were talking about the generosity of the people here (except for that one guy...), it was about how generous they are of person, their innate decency. When you have this good a customer base (and I thanked Vern today for his and Joe Burns efforts in making that so) it is an absolute pleasure to do what you can to make it just a little bit easier - stay an hour, wait a day, think it through, figure it out. The world is stressful; wine shouldn't be.

I love being here; I love my job. Thank you.
Merry Christmas, kids.

(Guatemalan tamales)

It's been seven days...

The Troglodyte is Unoccupied

...and that can't be good for anyone.

It's raining out there and from what I hear that's the way it's going to go for the next seven days, and also that there will be lots of it. Angelenos + driving is a bad equation. Angelenos + driving + holiday shopping angst + rain is a very, very bad equation, so be safe out there.

I was perusing New Yorker Magazine earlier... weekends are a good time to catch up on The Cave links in the right column. Nick's blog over there at Bordeaux Undiscovered is always a good read. Nick's brain scares me a little, it's so fabulously comprehensive. Were I his footman I'd really just be following him around with some open newspaper hoping to catch whatever crumbs of brain might, by sheer abundance and inadequate housing, inadvertently fall away. Whenever anyone comes into The Cave at the base of their wine learning curve, Nick is where I offer they both start and stay, foremost. The other links over there are also good, to me anyway, and if I'm missing one that really matters let me know. (I was on one blog yesterday and they had nearly fifty other blogs linked up to theirs; we prefer to keep it necessary. Like the one you're reading right now.)

...and stumbled onto their 2010 Year in Review with such options as Top 10 2-Beer Arguments of 2010, Best Africa Stories of 2010, three different film lists, 10 American Whiskeys That Made the World News in 2010 a Bit Less Unbearable, The Top 10 China Myths in 2010, Poetry, Legal Stories, Arts, Personalities...in the season of Top 10 Lists I've decided it's the number one top 10 list of the year.

Two highlights. 2010, It Wasn't All Bad. Item 9, a snippet from Patti Smith's National Book Award speech: “I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf. Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than a book.” Amen! Now you may be thinking, well, aren't I reading this online? Yes! Am I not now writing this online? Yes! My answer to all this. (I'll buy.)

Here is the other one, Top 10 Would-be Words Submitted to Merriam Webster. These are all really good, but snirt and fext are lovely. With texting, language is on the move anyway; let's spice it up with some Dr. Seuss lexicon.

Entirely unrelated, this week's cool realization about wine.
It's nice that towns and cities all want art to show, and they build often beautiful museums hoping to lure the six people alive who actually care enough about art to voluntarily go see it on a regular basis. The drawback of this is, to get those six people to come to their town they think they need established and recognizable names in their collections. So now one artist's comprehensive idea is strewn across the globe and the painting you are looking at is minus context, intent, and motivation. Maybe not Mona Lisa, but if you have this piece in 32 different museums does it make a noise? Like Monet's Rouen Cathedral series, 16 paintings in 9 museums.

Sixteen moments of a day; isn't that cool? Those crazy Impressionists and their flux capacities, painting flux. Flux is interesting and the Impressionists were pretty good at delineating that. It occurred to me this week that wine is pretty fluxy. You think you've discovered your form or archetypal wine , staid and unchanging, and then you go to get it one day and it's done, all out, no more until next year...but even then it won't be exactly the same. No wonder they were whooping it up at the Moulin Rouge, they knew the value of the moment.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...

(outside, not in here...don't panic.)

Keeping up with The Cave.

My job is better than your job. Remember when I used to gripe about crappy wine? What was I thinking...look at how lucky I am, at all the good stuff that comes my way. The people here are so mind-blowingly generous, wine or no wine, I'm very fortunate.

Two entirely pleasant wines. Seriously, you drink this stuff and after every sip it's like, "gosh-darn, that's good," except for the 'gosh-darn' part, but it's a family blog.

Fun and games with the lockers. This is hard to explain but that won't stop me. The Cave was built into the existing structure of the Hotel, and in this case that existing structure included a lot of arches. There is a photo from when the Napa Room was the restaurant. In designing The Cave, Mr. Day and Gil had to build square pegs into the round holes resulting in more than a few quirky lockers. The advantage is you can get a quirky locker for the same price as a standard locker and get extra space in it. The disadvantage is you often have to be an anorexic contortionist to utilize that extra space. Problem solved!, and it only took me two years to figure it out. The project of the week has been cutting the wall of our quirkiest of lockers to install a second door. Now the renter can get close to a 36-case locker for the price of a 24. Pretty good. His previous quirky locker, a twenty-something case locker for the price of an 18, will soon be available.












(These two impossible to reach spaces are now accessible.)


LIGHTS!CAMERA!ACTION!
Last Sunday the store front right above The Cave was empty. 24 hours later it was a fully functional set for ... only an ad. In Canada . Oh Henry! - the candy bar, not the exasperation. Forget that there's an already existing store right across the street, and forget that the industry jobs historically leave LA and go to Canada; Oh Henry (!) still exists? And they need an advertisement? Must be a Canadian thing. Then I saw the Nestle brand name on the bar and it made more sense: Nestle is headquartered here in Glendale. This week they brought a lot of jobs to Glendale. Go buy one of their Oh Henry! bars. !

Happy Hanukkah from The Cave...

...times seven. Cheers!

(12/2/10 edit: Yes, I know it's eight days. I spent all last night trying to figure out do I put "times eight" or do I count the post as one + seven more. Times. I never decided the right answer. Only two days in and I'm already stressed out.)