Empty Bottles

Melanie and I are without a doubt oenophiles: One of the major categories of our wedding registry was wine glasses. When we cook together, we often drink a glass or two, and occasionally end up splitting a bottle. One of the best classes I took as a grad student was the Cornell hotel school's Introduction to Wines, which imparted enough knowledge to me that I can identify what wines I like and why, and I can avoid being ripped off. It's not quite enough knowledge for me to un-self-consciously fake wine snobbery, but it brings me close enough to aspire.

Ithaca had two very good wine shops we favored: Northside Wines, which has the largest selection (nothing compared to the wine megastores you can find in much larger cities, but for a city of 30,000, the selection is very good) and Red Feet, a boutique wine store within walking distance of our apartments where we could always pickup a tasty wine for not much money -- or absinthe for our Europrententious boozer friends. We miss those stores, along with Just a Taste, the tapas and wine bar where Melanie and I went after our first movie date.

In Boston we've bought wine from three places: Walsh Wine and Spirits, the libation store just down the street (and the closest store that regularly carries Leffe); Best Cellars, a trendy looking shop at Coolidge Corner; and Trader Joe’s, also at Coolidge Corner. (Massachusetts law allows a grocery chain to sell liquor at only two locations per city; given the size of the 18-30 demographic near the intersection of Harvard Ave and Beacon Street, locating the alcohol there was a wise decision by corporate HQ.)

Walsh is perfectly good in a pinch, but its selection and prices reflect the fact that most of its customers are 20-somethings picking up a bottle on the way to a “dinner party” in some cramped, rotting studio apartment, where sliced cherry tomatoes and water cracker canape hors d'oeuvre will introduce a hearty meal of fine spaghetti and slightly burned garlic bread, followed by store bought, half-frozen cheesecake, and, if things go well, a hazy, cannabis-scented melange of pseudointellectual blather and kiss-and-tell gossip that may just devolve (hope springs eternal) into random debauchery. Such patrons, whatever their night-out pretenses to discriminating taste, are hardly ones to dicker over a ten percent markup above the going rate.

Best Cellars seems to be a bit of a joke. It has a very bright, hip, trendy interior design, with wines assorted according to taste categories rather than region; the appellations appear to have taken from the short-shorted derrieres of the passing college girls (fizzy, fresh, soft, luscious, juicy, smooth, sweet, big — perhaps an intentional subliminal suggestion). This arrangement demands no knowledge on the buyer's part, which is matched by a symmetrical ignorance on the part of the seller. I suppose this arrangement prevents shoppers from being embarrassed by condescending clerks, always a hazard in a real wine store, and it abets the owners in selling wine not worth drinking at prices not worth paying. The store has regular wine tastings, which are often as not more about providing the wine clerk lotharios with opportunities to chat up roving cliques of overpainted, overperfumed and underdressed young women to find out where the party is, as it is about selling wine to paying customers. Generally speaking, everything featured at the tasting is pretty bad, though we did buy one bottle (after about three trips and twenty samples) of Finger Lakes riesling, not because it was so good, but out of pity and nostalgia.

Trader Joe's is our regular wine store. The selection is decent, ranging from Three Buck Chuck to medium range Burgundys, and spans most of the world. Nearly everything is less than $20 a bottle, mostly under $15. Drinkability generally starts at around $7, unless there's a special; stay away from the few offerings (often Spanish or Portuguese vinhos verdes hot off the wine press) under $5. We've never found any exceptional wines at Trader Joe's, just pleasant, affordable wines for the dinner table. That's just right for a grocery store.

We are hardly oenomaniacs: our apartment's basement is filled with moldy cobwebs, rusting bicycles and uninsulated wiring, rather than row upon row of fine Bordeaux or Barolo under close light and temperature control (in our next abode, to be sure), but we do have a makeshift wine cabinet -- a wooden IKEA kitchen shelf modified to hold two wine racks. Seemingly permanently affixed there is my prized bottle of Chateau Guiraud, a Sauternes given to me by Melanie for my birthday a few hours before I asked her to marry me. (That's a story for another time.) Keeping it company is a bottle of Glenfiddich given to me by my Uncle Frank some years ago. I'm not much of a whiskey drinker, but now that I have a stepfather-in-law and a cousin who fancy themselves whiskey connoisseurs, I suppose I will learn.

We bought a wine tasting journal at the Ithaca Farmers Market last summer, and I started keeping notes on what we bought, but since the turn of the year I've fallen behind recording our impressions. I kept the bottles, reasoning that I'd fill in the journal as I found time. Three months of bottles makes quite a pile, and this weekend the empty bottle pile will succumb to the imperatives of housecleaning. Here's what we're tossing:

• From Jerrel's stash: Jerrel brings excellent French wine whenever we host a get together, even a Superbowl Party. It's wonderful, though occasionally he casts his pearls before swine. Both terrific:
  
  • Louis Latour Macon-Lugny Les Geneievres 2007
    
  • Joseph Faiveley Bourgogne Pinot Noir 2005
    
  
  
• From Canada, a somewhat disappointing novelty Riesling picked up for about $15 Canadian in duty free (there were appealing ice wines available, but they were all about $100):
  
  • Thirty Bench “Limited Yield” Riesling 2004 (Niagara Peninsula)
    
  
  
• Gold Medal Wine Club wines (a gift from Eric and Stephanie, my cousins in White Plains/NYC), both highly recommended and expensive:
  
  • Ballentine Vineyards Old Vines Chenin Blanc, 2007 (Napa Valley)
    
  • Niner Estates Sauvignon Blanc, 2006
    
  
  
• From Walsh, both perfectly fine, but a bit unremarkable and slightly overpriced at $12 and $14, respectively:
  
  • Veramonte Reserva Chardonnay 2007 (Casablanca Valley, Chile)
    
  • MadFish Sauvignon Blanc 2005 (Western Australia)
    
  
  
• From Trader Joe's, first a good picnic wine ($7, but we're not quite ready for picnics), and second our current favorite dinner wine, which we've bought several times and is priced nicely ($6, staff favorite). The merlot is light-to-medium-bodied, relatively smooth and a bit spicy, tasting of black fruit and maybe a bit of tobacco and cloves:
  
  • Ken Forrester Stellenbosch Petit Chenin Blanc 2008 (South Africa)
    
  • Three Knights Merlot 2006 (Russian River Valley) (no link I can find, just at TJ's)
    
  
  

Now, off to the recycling bin!