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February 3 2008
Good Grape is rockin’ a new world headquarters these days. I think we must be one of the three dozen people that have moved in the U.S. in the last four months, and, trust me; it came as a shock to me, as well. These “out of the blue” buyers pretty much paid our asking price and wanted to take possession in 19 days. Sure thing! The fact that we did it “for sale by owner” makes it all the more miraculous.
I loved my house, a house that I bought as a single guy and that I put more loving TLC and $$ into than was sensible. A neighbor down the street told me that he has lived on the street for 40 years and my house had never looked better—that is how much I loved that house. I hope the new buyers take as much pride in ownership and appreciate the boho vibe of the neighborhood.
We moved for many reasons, the least of which was the fact that our dog could not go on a walk without putting herself in peril by sniffing out chicken bones and other trash debris that half beagles find on neighborhood walks in urban environments. For the longest time I was going to write a blog post about wine pairing with fried chicken and buffalo wings because they were such a part of our neighborhood landscape that it was surreally comical. Alas, now that we have jettisoned ourselves from Indianapolis proper to the suburbs, our neighbors properly dispose of all of their trash and I now simply have to deal with the fact that they take snow removal seriously, very seriously.
One of the joys of our new place is room for wine, actual room for proper storage, whereas before I was sticking bottles in available nooks and crannies in our post WW II era house. Through this move process, when we were doing a home inspection on the house we bought, the inspector noted that the basement did not have an air return and, therefore, could not be heated or cooled. Ah, no problem. I think our unborn children are going to shiver and moan a little bit in seven or eight years as the basement turns into equal parts wine cellar and playroom, but for now, I am relishing the fact that the basement stays a moderate 57 - 58 degrees year round. You want to talk about a simple joy? A simple joy is going downstairs to grab a bottle of red that is perfectly chilled, no additional circumstance required other than the bottle choose!
Throughout the move process, as I took inventory on all of my wine, and I noted that better than 50% of the 100 or so bottles on hand were of the everyday drinking variety, I resolved myself, at the first of the year, to clean out inventory before buying anymore wine. So, I am supposed to be on wine buying quarantine.
Tax day, April 15th, was supposed to be the end of my buying moratorium at which point I would have made a sizeable dent into most of the everyday wines—the $15 and below and Trader Joe’s stock.
I don’t know how others moderate their wine buying, but I have found this buying quarantine VERY difficult to do. I like the process of going into a wine store, scanning the shelves, scanning my memory for things that I recall about producers, finding new wines and seldom drunk varietals and bringing them home to ceremoniously place in my basement cellar.
I have also found that a lot of my wine buying is a part of editorial decision-making, as well. Usually, I choose wine that can serve the dual purpose of acting as wine blog post fodder if I choose; this practice was mostly subconscious to me until my wife pointed out that my wine stash has spread like kudzu in the last two years.
I broke rank from this stoppage in wine buying very early—in the first week of January in order to buy a white blend, a part of a personal mission to find a Conundrum-like equivalent without paying $27 bucks a bottle. I wrote about it in a recent post found here.
Save for the small digression early, I was perfectly accepting of this halt to the wine buying process until I got the dreaded email come-on.
Damned if I did not get an email from one the Indianapolis areas best wine retailers this past week and they had the 2006 Beringer Vineyards Knights Valley Alluvium Blanc as their email special, comparing it favorably as a slightly more sophisticated Conundrum. All right, at $13.99 a bottle you might as well set the hook on this wine buying fish. I picked some up yesterday and fell off my wine inventory management wagon. It is a nice wine, a blend of Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Viognier boasting a 92 by Wine Spectator in the current issue, with a history of solid scores from RP and WS. It is a bit more sophisticated than the Conundrum, a little less residual sugar and a little more oak (French). It is a touch buttery, but clean and crisp at the same time. The Alluvium is recommended, even if it forced me into a relapse. Eric Asimov had a post on Beringer in the last 10 days or so, you can read it here.
Finally, a couple of my favorite wine bloggers are holding contests.
Lenn Thompson, founder of Wine Blogging Wednesday, is holding a logo contest. Running through March 31st, this is your chance to create the logo that will march Wine Blogging Wednesday into its continued growth and the future (and for young designers, this is a chance to do a logo that will be spread wide and internationally all over the Internet) There are some tasty prizes for the winning entry, as well. Find all the details here.
El Jefe at Twisted Oak is holding a fun little contest called, “Take Your Rubber Chicken to Work.” The contest runs February 4th – 10th and all of the details are here. The folks at Twisted Oak always have a lot of fun and this looks like another fun idea to build on the positive esprit de corp amongst fans.
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