Wine Truth: by Michael Dominic

My wife Ting and I just bought our first home. A huge prewar apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. I’m sorry to leave behind the movement of Manhattan, but the trade-off in space makes it a no contest. 280 square feet to 1400 square feet.

When I first went to see it, I saw that in the kitchen was a 50 bottle built-in Vinotemp wine cellar. I swear, I got a little choked-up. Vinotemp is not a brand that I would trust long term with my finest bottles, but I figure I’ll keep it at drinking temperature, and keep more bottles at the ready. Of course I will still have my 3-temp EuroCave.

We should be moved in by the end of May or the start of June. If you want to see more pictures of the apartment go here. That’s not our furniture and stuff in the place, it’s the sellers.

After ingesting a good, albeit, oleaginous meal at Great Jones Diner, my friend Todd and I wandered over and down to East 1st Street. A new wine bar opened a few months back named Simon Sips. My wife and I sat and had a glass there a week earlier, while waiting for a table at a restaurant around the corner. It was relaxed, small and welcoming in comparison to other similar places, and made me want to return. My friend and I were greeted by a frazzled but kind-eyed woman. In the evening the space is dim, but in the day it’s large plate window pours the sunlight in.

One of the six or so small tables was available, so we sat down and looked over the menu. Next to us were a table of lanky women that could have only worked in fashion. At the outside tables there were men fiddling with laptops. Not only is Simon Sips a wine bar but it is also a cafe, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as brunch and an array of desserts.

It’s been a long, cold, hard winter. I’ve been absent from this blog for many reasons. Most prevalent, the illness and passing of my grandmother. I want to continue writing here even if not with the same frequency.

Today I’ll start easy with a wine that I shipped back from Sonoma. My wife and I spent a few days in Sonoma County when we went on our honeymoon over the holidays. We visited many of the small local wineries were we found some lovely wines. I, in total, shipped back more than three cases.

I learned something last week. There are cooperatives that make wine. This means that several small vineyards all put in their grapes to produce wine together. This seems to be pretty common.

Les Vignerons D’Estezargues is a Southern Rhone cooperative of ten vineyards. What sets them apart is that instead of putting all their grapes in to one batch. They select the best grapes for special cuvees and use the remainder in their lower end wine. All the wines are made with care and made with natural processes.

I’ve really dropped the ball here. I stopped updating for two months. My only excuse is that I got married and I have been busy with married life.

I have a tendency to do things all or nothing. I’m talking about this site, not my marriage.

What I’m going to do from this point on is update when I feel like it. When things feel like an obligation or a job then it ceases to be fun. Plus when my video camera broke I couldn’t do videos anymore.

So, I will be updating soon.

People don’t drink a whole lot of Sicilian wine, except maybe the Sicilians. That’s a shame because they have some outstanding wine coming from the rock where my people are from.

I’ll keep this short and sweet. The wine is the 2006 - Valle dell’Acate, Il Frappato ($19). The varietal is Frappato. In the glass it is light ruby and not dense at all. On the tongue it is medium-bodied and rings of dark fruit, currant and berries. The overwhelming flavor here is black cherry. I mean it really tasted like cherries. This is a very well balanced delicious wine worth it’s tag. I’d say it’s drinkable with any Italian dish. I want to try it with a little chill on it.

Tomorrow I hope to have a video up. Yay!

I never watched so much of the Olympics ever before in my entire life. In fact I sometimes in the past have paid no attention to the games at all. This Olympiad, I watched it from the opening ceremony, to the close. I recorded two channels at once around the clock. When I’d come home from work I’d skim through to things that I found interesting. I would have watched it all if I could. I found myself cheering on Michael Phelps, a person I never heard of, to win gold in several categories of swimming, a sport I never watched. It’s always nice to beat the French.

I found a new tribal streak deep within myself, rooting on the USA in any sport, no matter how mundane, including badminton. Isn’t badminton is a game that you play for twenty minutes when you go to your cousins house, giving up to go inside and watch TV? It’s hardly an Olympic sport. Next thing you know they’ll let Ping Pong into the Olympics. Oh, wait…