Not so long ago a woman came into the store while I was working and selected a bottle of wine from the shelf. "How much is this?" she asked, looking at the price tag.

"It's $12.95 plus tax," I said. "Is there anything else I can suggest or help you find?"

"This used to be less," she said. I inwardly rolled my eyes but continued smiling helpfully. "That Talitha--trying get a few more dollars."

I almost lost it. I have worked food and wine retail in New York for more than four years now, and this was perhaps the most infuriating comment I have ever been subjected to. "Ma'am, that wine has been the same price since the first day we opened," I said, gritting my teeth. "And if you know of any non-profit wine stores in the area, I'd love to go and check one out." I smiled warmly. "We have some great $10 and unders you might like."

She paid for her wine and left.

Why the story? Well, wine prices are about to go up folks, so please don't be this woman. Some things are our fault. All of us live in New York, which is expensive. Talitha needs to feed and clothe her child and occasionally put a couple dollars into the college fund. And we all drink more wine than is strictly necessary. But at the end of the day this is a business, the point of which is to make money. We all insist on staying paid. Guilty as charged.

The weak dollar though? We didn't make that happen. Winemakers in California, Chile and Argentina raising prices to match European wine prices? That's not our fault either. No, when you come in and see that your favorite French or Spanish wine is $3 higher than it used to be, don't curse us under your breath, and certainly not to our faces. Because we're going to stay in the crazy "for profit" game.

And basically, it's Bush's fault.

The weak dollar is making European wine much, much more expensive. We're as sad about it as you. It's making it harder for us to bring you fantastic, well-priced wines and more expensive to drink our way through this recession. If you think about it, the weak dollar seems like a vast Republican conspiracy: It makes wine, travel to Europe and in general all foreign things more expensive. It makes us distrustful and insular, looking for a power higher than even Ben Bernacke to deliver us from economic evil. It turns us into small-minded folk. Don't let it turn you against us! Fight the power.

So when you see your favorite Burgundian Pinot Noir is $5 more than last year don't blame us, blame Bush.

Labels: wine culture

I feel compelled to write something about Heath Ledger's untimely and ultimately very sad death. We utilize celebrity on our chalkboards, every day at both Vine Wine and Champion Coffee. Sometimes to ridicule and sometimes to celebrate the obnoxious and seemingly silly behavior and spectacle taking place in this, at times, mundane world that we live in. It started out when I first opened TEN63 as a way to fill a chalkboard with more than just blather about the product inside, and as a way to stop thinking about the Iraq war, which had just begun, for one minute. It grew, those silly little chalkboards, into a part of the day that random people as well as devoted customers looked forward to.

This all has nothing and everything to do with Heath Ledger. For whatever reason when he died my first thought was; this is not chalkboard material. I think unlike Britney Spears and Scarlett Johansson, I laid some weird (and perhaps irrational) personal claim to Heath Ledger. He was the guy who moved to Brooklyn and lived there as one of us, he was the guy so openly in love with Michelle Williams at the Oscars in 2005. He was the guy who you would play some skeeball with at a bar and never realize who he 'was'.

This past fall Michelle Williams showed up on a school tour that I was on. I remember wondering why she would have to take a tour? After all can't the celebrities just back door the entire process? I like to think that maybe she and Heath didn't see themselves as celebrities and rather as people employed in the field of acting. And I like to think that what happened to Heath Ledger was above all a tragic accident and nothing more depressing.

Labels: stuff

I used to champion West Coast wines, calling the Frenchies stuffy, snooty and bo-ring. Now it's all France, all the time. Even though I've come to recognize, reluctantly, that it's just easier to find well made French wines that are interesting and well priced, I still love California and Oregon. But not enough to spend $30 on a cherry-berry-burst Zinfandel or a toothpaste-y Pinot Noir. For Christmas I drank a white Burgundy from St. Aubin, a Brouilly and a ridiculously good 100% gamay from Anjou that was bright, fruity, earthy and hella gamey, dude. Also, organic and biodynamic, and made by Olivier Cousin, a maniacal winemaker who handcrafts amazing stuff.

Tony (above) and Phil Coturri are America's version of Olivier Cousin. For one, they're total hippies - Eric Asimov once quoted someone who described Phil as "second runner up in a Jerry Garcia lookalike contest." Coturri Winery is the kind of place that perfectly blends the free spirit of the West Coast with traditional European winemaking practices. The Coturris have been making wine in California for three generations now, since the pater familias Enrico arrived in San Francisco at the turn of the (20th) century with $10 in his pocket. Go to their website and read the whole history -- I want to talk about the wine.

I drank a bottle of their 2005 Albarello last night and mmmmm child, what an amazing wine. Mostly Zinfandel and Petite Syrah with some other blending grapes thrown in, this wine is the result of a mixed grape vineyard in Sonoma that was planted to produce a full-bodied table wine. The Coturris don't irrigate, they hand prune and they use only naturally occurring yeasts, so the wine really expresses the character of where it was grown. And what did Sonoma taste like in 2005? Fresh raspberry juice, bright tannins and loamy earth. Let it breathe, maybe even decant it (there's LOADS of sediment) and you have a warm California hillside in a glass.

Labels: californian, french, organic/biodynamic, reds, zinfandel