November 2009
I
love me Lucky Charms.
Pink Hearts, Orange Stars, Yellow Moons, Green Clovers, Blue Diamonds,
and Purple Horse Shoes! And I can’t get enough of Coco Puffs and Cookie
Crisp. And for that matter, keep the Frankenberry coming. Fruity
Pebbles , Honey Combs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I don’t think there is a
Sugar cereal i dislike. But if I had to choose one cereal to
eat for the rest of my days, it would be a toss up between Peanut
Butter Crunch and Golden Grahams. I can put away that PB Crunch until
the roof of my mouth is battered and scarred from those spiked balls of
peanut joy. And, Oh those Golden Grahams. Golden
Grahams have no mascot. Nor do they have technicolor
marshmallows. But on the addictive meter they rate at the top. Just
pure honey goodness and a catchy jingle i hum over crunches and gulps.
Have a golden day!
My
apologies for the harsh vision i have conjured but this is what sugar
cereal can do to people.
You might be saying to yourself that this guy’s kitchen must look like
the set from Seinfeld. The cupboards crowded with colorful boxes from
end to end like on overstuffed library shelf.
Nope.
No cereal to be found in our kitchen. It has been decided the home is a
happier place without the Count, the Cap’n or silly Rabbit. You see, I
have come to terms with the notion that i might have a slight problem
with sugar cereal. When I reach for the spoon and bowl, its done with a
frantic haste. The cabinet and drawers are left open, the fridge is
slammed and the box tops are ripped off. This is because the decision
has been made and there is no stopping me. Its all
or nothing and i’m going for it. I feel like the cookie monster
unleashed on a pile chocolate chips. There is a frenzy of pouring,
clanking, scooping, smacking.
Pouring, clinking, shoveling, slurping.
More pouring and more crunching!!
And now my belly is in turmoil and my head is on the verge of spontaneous sugar combustion.
Things start out with the right intentions.
Pour a little Trix, add some milk, eat up and you’re on your way.
I wish it worked that way but this is how you get caught in the loop.
Stop and think about that.
Cereal and milk is one the earliest food pairings we have come to love.
Its a classic.
Cool creamy milk and crunchy sweet cereal.
A perfect match can be bliss.
I very seldom have dinner without wine. They need each other.Wether its a slice of pizza with with glass of Grenache or olive crusted rack of lamb with a bottle of older Priorat.
October 2009
I remember when the Kiss solo albums came out.
Paul! Gene! Ace! And that other guy, um... Peter.
Four destined masterpieces released simultaneously. A landmark in Rock and Roll history! (At least in the eyes of the four members, their record company and leagues of teen idolizers.)
In 1978, Kiss were at the height of their world domination, sitting on top of 4 platinum albums in just 2 years and a record tour attendance. Kiss action figures, lunch boxes, costumes, toothbrushes, you name it.
Kiss was an explosion of Rock n Roll meets Vegas meets Comic books meets Halloween.
-
Ahhh Grenache! The spice of the party. The crowd pleaser. The food companion
-
Hail to Syrah. So bold on its own. Sometimes even monstrous. But always dark, deep and full of surprises.
-
- And Mourvedre. the colorful and complex rogue. In the shadow of the famed ones. But given the chance, it transcends with exotic expression and lush intensity.
I love what you’ve got
Lets get together, we can
Get hot
No more tomorrow, baby
Time is today
Girl, I can make you feel
Okay
No place for hidin baby
No place to run
You pull the trigger of my
Love gun"
September 2009
Its around 3 o’clock and getting a little stuffy in the office nook behind the cooler.
Its crowded.
There’s an arsenal of 20 some odd open bottles crammed onto the top of the desk.
The centerpiece is gallon size bucket filled to the brim with murky red slosh of discarded wine.
4 of us hover around the desk with glasses and note pads.
Its a typical afternoon in the Divino back office except for one thing.
Its oddly quiet.
Not a word from their side.
No proclamations about awards and points
No ponderings about the slopes of the hills, the content of the soil, the age of the vines.
No bios on the how he or she used to do that their whole life and now they do this.
They used to be the winemaker there, there and there.... and now here.
And on our side, not a word either
And it is odd.
No bursts of pleasure of grunts of disgust.
No sudden exclamations of bizarre adjectives and descriptions that seem to make sense at the time.
No third degree questions. How long this? How much of that? Where again?
Between the sniffing slurping and spitting,
Just silence.
Occasionally an eyebrow raises or the corner of a mouth turns up.
And then, after wine number 22 has been evacuated carefully on top of the bucket slosh, the bottles are packed up and they roll the wine bags out the door.
There’s an uneasy feeling of lack of closure. No dealing and haggling, no ordering and no future promises
Just a nod, a thanks, and ‘see you later’.
Its Naked and Blind time at Divino.
Naked are the wines and Blind are the tasters.
At the end of August we blind taste around 175 mystery wines between $6 and $12 and rate them. Then, for the month of September, we fill our 10 under $10 rack with the ones with the highest score. Our sales reps patiently play along and bring us bottles wrapped in foil or stuffed in brown bags. And we score these mystery contestants from 1 to 10.
Two things we are looking for.
Quality is one. This being the balance, structure and complexity of the wine.
But just as important is the pleasure factor. Is it a pleasurable experience to drink this wine? Does it call you back for another sip? Another bottle?
There are two main schools of blind tasting. The first is to try and guess the grape, region and vintage. This helps train your palate into identifying the characteristics of varietals and regions.
And then there is blind tasting to judge/rate a wine with out being subjected to any information. And this is the school we are featuring this month at Divino.
Even before you raise your glass to your lips, a percentage of your final opinion has been already been formed by the information known or perceived. It pushes your assessment in a certain direction. Much as we like not to admit, knowing the cost, producer, region and even seeing the label, sways us one way or another. It can’t be helped.
I present to you, a Texas Riesling by Mega Corp Wines equipped with a laughing armadillo on the label. I bet you have a few ideas rolling through your mind ready to hack away at any opinions you might have after tasting the wine.
So the point of all this is to evaluate wine in a bias free setting.
And open ourselves to new wine experiences.
Preconceptions limit us.
There is a vast wine world out there ready for exploration and indulging.
Yet there are too many misconceptions and there is too much warped information.
And a lot of the time we are led by other’s opinions without even giving a wine justified chance, whether its friends, critics or particular movies. And some times we come to a conclusion about a grape or region that keeps us away for an extended period.
But there are just too many variables and constant changes in the wine world to stick to a blanket opinion on a type of wine.
Tasting blind gives us a chance to reevaluate wine we think we don’t like, and explore wines we would never attempt to try.
And I too am not free from these unfounded prejudices. Here's an example of one. If I know that the bottle in front of me is a mass produced wine or “grocery store wine”, i find myself already being swayed in the negative direction before it is even in my glass. I feel that bias creeping along in the back of my mind even if the wine is a pleasant surprise. (You’ll notice a grocery store wine this month on the Naked and Blind rack that got the best of me during our tastings.)
This month we invite you to drink free of discrimination.
We present these wines naked. Free of labels region, cost or varietal. Stripped of anything that could spark a presumption.
And you are the judge. The blind and unbiased judge. Forming your opinion solely on what you are smelling and tasting.
Hopefully in the end, some new doors are opened.
New kinds of bottles are popped.
New regions and flavors are discovered.
And new sensations are experienced.
Isn’t that what its all about?
The Naked and the Blind
In the wine world, labels, bottle shapes, closures,winery names, all play an important part of marketing the finished product. We all would like to think that these are just frills or add ons and the juice behind the glass is the only thing that matters, but this "packaging" delivers more influence then we think. With 6,000 wineries in the US alone, competition is fierce and it is important for a bottle to stand out on the shelf.
At Divino, we taste any where from 40 to 300 hundred wines(and liquors) any given week. We use these tastings to carefully hand pick our inventory. A lot goes in to the process and only a small percentage ever makes it on the shelves. We like to say we remain impartial as the wines are presented before we begin, but after doing this for 15 years, those prejudgment demons are lurking. Happy critter wines(animal labels) tend to be sugared and void of tannins. The mass production and conglomerate owned wineries tend to put out "correct" yet somewhat uninteresting juice. The super boutique, 200 case, self proclaimed wine making rock stars tend to release over extracted, super concentrated monsters. And the list goes on.
So this month we decided to try something different. We tasted 120 wines Blind, scored them , and featured the winners on our rack up front.
In the last week of August, the wines came to us Naked.No names or labels. We didn't know if it had a cork or a screw cap. If it was stacked 2 stories tall at the entrance of some liquor mega mart. If it came from Napa , La Mancha or Palisades. The only thing we knew was that they retail from $8 to $12. We rated them on a 20 point scale. 1 being undrinkable and 20 being the best thing we tasted all year. At the end of the week the name and place of origin was revealed and up they went on our September rack. Plenty of surprises, some disbelief and few "I knew it".
At the end of this month we invite you to experience the same tasting enlightenment at Capelli Floral. You will be the blind jury as we hold court for our very first "The Naked and the Blind" . At this event all wines will be cloaked and numbered. Taste in any order at your leisure, write comments and ratings or try to guess the grape or country. Most important make note on whether you like it. Then make you way down the block to Divino to have the wines revealed to you. Prepare to be surprised.
-Dm
After 17 years of the restaurant industry, retail is definitely a strange and somewhat quieter word. Pouring booze for others was a means to support my passion for music. Over the years the booze developed into a passion itself. Gradual realization that the culture, history and process behind wine and liquor was as diverse and all encompassing as music, bewitched and inspired me to create my own oasis of liquid treasures to share with the rest of the city. I say share because sometimes, while I’m taking the recycling bins to the sidewalk, it dawns on me that I could possibly be Divino’s best customer.
November 2008
November 2007
January 2009
Its the start of 09 and once again we bring you the Vigilantes of Value wine selection.
During the rest of the year we usually showcase a region, grape or style, but January seems to be the perfect time to focus on the value of wine. The restrained and some what frugal vibe of this month lends to the scrutiny of quality to buck ratio. There are many elements that factor in on the final cost of a wine besides the actual expense of the wine making process. There’s real estate, harvesting labor, supply/demand and of course, ratings and reviews. Depending of the balance of one or more of these factors, there is a potential for a wine to over deliver for the price.
By focusing on these value wine wines in January, our goal is to emphasize the point that wine is not a privilege. Wine is for everyone at any time. 5 dollars or 50 dollars, there is quality good wine at every level that should be integrated into our every day lives. It should be drunk with meals and shared with friends. It should be something you can order at a bar or a coffee house. And if is to be treated as such, than the price that we pay should reflect it’s everyday use. It is important to have quality wines available that are under $8 dollars to take home every night. Sure, there are collectors, and people who play the ratings game or pursue trophy wine bragging rights. And, we deal in those wines but there is a time and a place for higher priced bottles. There is nothing like the experience of diving into the heavenly perfume of a ripe Barolo, being lifted by the sheer elegance of a Cotes du Nuits or getting floored by the magnitude of Old vine Zin. But we are talking about everyday wine not “occasion wine” Every day wine sounds a little mundane but this doesn’t mean that value wine can’t be exciting and enticing. It just needs to be an everyday price.
Some of you are hesitant on paying so little for a bottle and your caution is understandable. There is a lot of crap out there. Bottles with cutesy names and critter labels that are all marketing and no substance. Bulk Wine that has been manipulated or adjusted with additives. But this is where we come into the picture.
It is our job to sort through the vast ocean of innocuous to piss poor inexpensive wines to find the gems. We look for wine that has a nice balance of fruit, tannin and acidity, housed in a solid structure. And most important is character; a defining trait about the wine that sets it apart from the well made, but bland. Defining character is what that makes us want to keep reaching for the glass to please our palates over and over. Character gives us a good wine experience and leaves an imprint on our mind.
So if you haven’t been stocking up on your everyday wines before, now is the time to come in and fix that void.
January 2008
So its January and you're broke.
Check out the wine of the month from Sicily and our rack up front to keep the household wine flowing in this barren and impoverished time of the year we call January.