18 + 18 =

This is what the Bordeaux Room looks like from above. I'm not really kidding too much. I wish I weren't kidding at all, that would be fun.

Isn't 'alphabetical order' the coolest invention ever? Imagine the mess everything would be otherwise. Everytime I open my dictionary I fall in love with alphabetical order all over again; whoever invented it was brilliant, I always think. Sequential numbers are also good. The Bordeaux Room is broken into lettered aisles with numbered lockers. A-19, B-26, like that. I like the Bordeaux Room because the lockers sound like a really big game of Battleship.

The numbers for each lettered aisle go down one side of the aisle, along that section of the back wall, and come back down the other side of that aisle. Because of this, the lockers along the back wall have three different letters. Riveting, I know, but there won't be a quiz, so don't sweat it.

This is a typical 18-case locker. Tall, narrow, deep, the 18-case lockers line the back wall. Recently, two of these became available. One guy moved up to the next size and the other guy moved out of town. We occasionally get the request for a 36-case locker which we typically answer by offering a 24 + a 12-case locker. But since the two empty lockers were next to each other, I thought, well, why not take the wall down between them and have a 36-case locker?

So that's what I did. Now we have a 36-case locker. I was, literally, sweeping up sawdust earlier when someone came in wanting to maybe expand their collection, so the 36 might already be gone.


The slight rub: typical troglodyte luck...after getting that wall down, I noticed the two lockers were from two different aisles. Alpha-numerically speaking, I've now got a locker with two incompatible letters and four incompatible numbers. What do I call it? How do I keep the order? How do I maintain organization?

(Troglodyte stress, we should all be so lucky.)

Cheap Wine Weekend!

Von's/Pavilions is finishing up their 30% off sale this weekend. Can you get good wine at Von's? That's what I asked the person who brought some in from there and they said yes, but it varies by neighborhood and location. Interesting.

Wally's Wine and Spirits is having an "AA Sale" this weekend, up to 50% off wines of Argentina and Australia. Oh, those clever Wally's people!

Boredom Sunday.

Last night's supermoon. Oh well, you can catch the next one in 2029. I'll be 116 years old. But I'll be able to open my vintage-of-the-century Bordeaux, so that'll be nice.

Counterfeit measures.

Ah...the Man Cave, 1982 - 2008. It should have been immortalized in the Smithsonian, faithfully reconstructed and poignantly positioned between Archie Bunker's chair and the Gene Autry lunchbox.

Scattered in and amongst the treasured decor were treasured wine bottles. They lined the entryway along the baseboard, were poised atop the art deco molding, and sat on ledges - lots of empty wine bottles from over the years, contributed, I assume, by collectors who cellared here all these years. They are of the few things that remain (the clipper ships and black velvet paintings remain represented as well), at the end of the second hall.

That 1975 Pichon Lalande Bordeaux is still sealed and has wine in it, but the neck is cracked - thus the stained label.

There's a 1989 Chateau Lafleur. There's a bottle of that for sale right now at Wally's for $1900. An '88 Lafite Rothschild is going for $1250. Across the top of the label is faded blue ink that reads 'Bastille Day 2004.' Someone certainly had a nice one. A '75 Mouton Rothschild...an '89 Chateau Margeaux...so many amazing bottles. These were all before my tenure here, but HERE wouldn't be here without them. They are the photographs, the memories, and it would be a loss had they all been smashed to protect against what has become a bit of a problem in counterfeiting.

Counterfeiting wine is news right now, covered by the likes of CNN, but of course no one speaks to it more thoroughly than Nick over there at Bordeaux Undiscovered. You can read his post on Defeating Counterfeit Wine in China here. Smashing the bottles is one way to curtail it, before all the technology can catch up to it.

I could sell a lot of these bottles on the black market and probably make out pretty well. Or I could cut out the middleman, throw some Charles Shaw into those babies, and do even better. 2-buck-Chuck, some kind of Lafite something, no one knows the difference. It's all smoke and mirrors...and labels.

Better yet, I'll just leave them where they are. The world needs its stories. How suddenly they can disappear, we've so recently learned, without our throwing them away.

The Almost Super Moon

It's going to rain tomorrow and so there is a good chance we are going to miss the supermoon, the moment of lunar perigee. So here's the moon tonight, the slightly less than supermoon.

There's not a lot to be found on how this might affect bio-dynamic wine; there was only one hit on that search, a quick mention of increased sap flow and high disease in vineyards. So we will check back in on that one.

In the meantime, watch out for the super werewolves.

Happy St. Pats?

I was going to post something for St. Patrick's Day and I forgot.

Oops.

Trade your custom drapery for wine. Also, my wife likes diamonds.

There is the occasional news story about some kid who will start with a broken ice skate, left foot only, and through a series of trades end up with a BMW. Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but only slight.
All of this is done by way of the "barter" section on Craigslist. If you want some wine and have something to get rid of, all the wine you see on the left there is currently available for trade on Craigslist. There are currently five opportunities to trade wine, all rather odd/similar.

Here is one post:

"I have a huge collection of fine estate wines from all over the world. Although I love to enjoy, I will never get through them all. Have magnums, tank samples, cellarmaster picks, signed bottles and many varietals and vintages. Also have half wine vineyard barrels on tall stands. Great for decoration in your cellar, beverage holder for parties etc. "

Here is what is being sought in trade:

Barney's giftcard
Private tennis court access
ipod
Gems (my wife likes diamonds, sapphires and emeralds)
Vintage and designer handbags
Artwork (no craft projects, looking for paintings, photographs, sculptures)
Weekend Getaways
Tickets
Books (rare and first editions and biographies)
Vespa
Women's bike
Jewelry
Textiles (imported, unique pillows, fabrics, rugs)
Custom Drapery
Tires for a Jeep Cherokee (235 75 15)

If I have custom drapery, wouldn't it have been customized for my windows? Other posts have the Barney's gift card and "weekend getaway", but the list morphs to include, say, a gym membership a "high quality toaster oven."

Anyway, now you know what to do with those pesky diamonds and sapphires that keep cluttering up the house.

Arrogant Bastard Ale, I'm not worthy.

Suppose it was a really beautiful day out. Suppose it's March and the whole town smells like citrus blossoms, heady and seductive, and it was over 80 degrees out, and you have a bunch of stuff to do so you break your own rule and have a cup of coffee after dinner. Then you get caught up in things and lose track of the coffee and the time, and it's one in the morning. You think, Oh, great, now I'm going to be up all night. Then you get the brilliant idea that if you hop on your bike real fast you can run down to 7-11 to get a beer, to maybe coax some sleep out of the caffeine. Except it's a beautiful night and it smells like orange blossoms.

You don't want to get a Budweiser so you decide to try this stuff. And then you take the meandering, poky, long way home. It's dark out, there are no cars so you ride in the middle of the street, it's quiet, it's not too cold, and it smells great. It's a beautiful night.

At first taste you think, Wow, there's a lot of citrus in that, is it in my psyche or in my Ale? After a while, though, you're wondering why, if you're drinking a grapefruit, then why not just eat one of these things.














...with some of this, if you need to go there, yum.


Still, I slept like a little baby.

Shoes

Is there wine everything?

I was Google-Imaging earlier. I like Google Images because you throw your search in there and it starts out innocently enough, but at some point disintegration sets in and it gets seemingly, and sometimes entertainingly, random.

I realized this weekend that when the computer crashed last year, amongst the data lost was the web site, so I need to do it over again, or do a new one. Though I'll use my own images, I was seeking inspiration and so Googled "wine bottle silhouette." At some point this picture showed up. I recoiled. Then I clicked on it. Then I followed it to the Virtual Shoe Museum. It's a flip-flop. (Or maybe just flop?)


This was also in the cork category. Much better, but really, can you actually walk in this thing?





I kind of like the Nike Hamburger Shoe, though.

Part 2, The Best Week EVER.

So, the point being, I neither expect nor work for tips. Sometimes you just enjoy doing stuff for people, especially if it's not helping them to move or driving them to the airport and otherwise requires very little effort. The other point being, there are a lot of unbelievably generous people on earth and most of them cellar their wine here. It really blows me away.

Wednesday, Jacques came in to move his wine. He didn't like his locker. Half an hour later he decided he liked his locker after all and didn't move his wine. Then he handed this to me. I was like, "Jacques, all I did was stand here and watch you not move your locker, it's not like I did anything." Later that day Chris came in and gave me a giftcard to Starbucks. I have no idea why.

I cleaned out the storage room Friday, how oddly motivated of me. It was quiet all day, and then around five-thirty everyone showed up at once, it seemed. Christina brought me a bag of oranges and lemons and meyers lemons from her tree, very cool, and then all sorts of organic spontaneity kicked in and all I'm at liberty to say about that is KBS Breakfast Stout may have been dethroned by Thomas Hardy's Ale, 1995. Forget that they don't even make this stuff anymore; this was the stuff they stopped making before that. Unbelievably amazing.



What a nice day today. I putzed around town a bit before work and saw these fliers posted on all the light poles near the high school. It reads, "I am looking for Juliet...I came back for you...eight...remember, till the heavens stop the rain I'm your biggest fan. You are the one, you are the only true love of my life...I miss you, Juliet, call me..." and then he leaves his real phone number.

As weeks go, It's hard to beat this one.

Part 1 (a note from the underground).

A note on the ginormous path of bewildering generosity.

I like wine storage, it's interesting. Well, not so much the storage, the sitting here and watching air all day (though I'm shockingly suited to the task) but the motivation of the people who store here; it's hugely, intriguingly varied. It's about wine, sure, but also: for some it is investment. For others it is the hunt of the label, and for some within that the status of specific labels. Some are obsessive collectors who have more wine than they'll ever drink. Some have deeply developed palates and are beautifully dedicated to satisfying them while others are gratified by the bargain, the usual, the known. Regardless your motivation, and regardless the amount of wine you have here, equal effort and service are yours. I do this because I want to, because I like it. So few people are passionate about anything, how lucky am I to be able to witness this crazy ardor in these people around me. I am a troglodyte, but I know a good passion when I see one, so if I can do anything at all to help that along so be it.

If you have six cases here or 600, you get the same service. Please know, I don't work for or expect tips. All these wine people, trust me, every one of them a little bit crazy into the whole wine thing; what a privilege it is being privy to that, even moreso being able to do something once in a while to make it a little bit easier...for them to be that divinely crazy.

I can name that tune in one note!

If you've been following along at all, first: I'm sorry; second, then you know I'm wine-challenged like your worst nightmare.

I'm catching up on some reading of the links over there in the sidebar, and I'm reading Eric Asimov's post Summing up Wine in Two Words. Also the comments. Mr. Asimov writes,
"In my column on Wednesday, I tried to retrieve the ideal of simplicity and apply it to wine descriptions. Instead of trying to over-describe a wine in irrelevant detail, I suggest that we limit ourselves to one of two words, sweet or savory."

It made me think of the wine description I recently posted, cut and paste from an entry on Snooth.com:
"Very sweet wild fruit on the nose that is a bit figgy and fudgy with a strong vegetal top note, and a vivid streak of tar. Broad and expansive in the mouth with a wonderful transparent feel to the pure red fruits. This really floats in the mouth with a nice accent of tannin helping to give it some shape. The finish read more...is long and really driven by that tannin which adds a nice earthy note to the finale 89pts"

Versus, say, this description I read yesterday while checking out Soter Vineyards Brut Rose:
"A deep salmon pink in color, it offers up an alluring bouquet of biscuit, rose petal, minerals, strawberry, and raspberry. Medium to full-bodied, rich, and flavorful on the palate, this vibrant effort is impeccably balanced and lengthy."

One of these descriptions is intriguing and makes me want to taste that stuff; the other makes me point and laugh, but both are (obviously) more than two words, so maybe it not the amount of words that is the issue, but the words.

Still, in the comments section, I much appreciated this one:
"makes me think of a tasting note by michael broadbent that captivated me on some claret or another in one of his 'great vintage wine' books: "lovely. four stars". nuff said."

Good style, indeed.