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.

I arrived a few minutes early for my regular Friday evening tasting at ACWC. Keith, had not yet set up whatever he was going to pour. There was a large overweight man with a bulging plastic bag. He was talking about having the second worst” fight he had ever had with his brother who had been visiting from out of town. He described his brother getting aggressive after combining Jaggermeister and his Aderol. I always lose some respect for a person that drinks Jaggermeister, like a person that likes cheap thrillers or bad rock music.

Finally July 20th arrived and it was time for the wine tasting at my parent’s wine club. They live in South New Jersey, not too far from Atlantic City in a very nice retirement community. When I write retirement community I do not mean a “home” or assisted living facility. It’s just a suburban development of houses where you have to be 55 or older to live. Being that folks are living longer and are healthier at older ages, other than the gray hair they mostly seam pretty spry and fun to be around. I especially like their friend Tony who has mad wine knowledge.

People ask me why I tend to moan about the Stelvin screw caps. The answer is I think the ritual of popping out a cork is sexy. We as wine lovers fetishise the process. It’s the entry into the bottle, and once the bottle is open who knows where the night will go. If you’re on a date and you crack off a screw-top like your opening a two liter bottle of Coca-Cola, it’s not as sensual as sliding the cork slowly from the neck until you here the slight pop.

Consumers also just assume that a wine is bad quality when they see the Stelvin on the bottle. They look at it as tacky and will often move right past a wine that has one. The fact is that most people drink crap because they like the picture of the frog or the kangaroo on the label. Those companies know better than to put a cheap looking Stelvin on their products.

Thursday night I went over to Astor for a tasting. The wine they were pouring was as usual mediocre. That’s not to say that Astor is not a great shop. They are. They just more often then not have bad tastings.

After I tried the four lame wines I noticed a table set up with a stack of books and a very tall skinny man with a friendly face. I walked over to see what was happening and I quickly realized that the man was none other than Dr. Vino (Tyler Colman), the famous wine blogger that sets the bar for all the rest of us. He was selling his book “Wine Politics“.

What’s the deal with Gary Vaynerchuk anyway? If you are into wine you bump into him everywhere on the internet. When I first started to google things like ‘decanting’ or the like, his videos would be at the top of the results. I would watch them and part of me liked his approach and part of me wanted to throw him out a window. Ya’ know, just from like the second floor so he’d calm down a little, or start taking his Ritalin.

I thought that it was cool that a regular guy from Jersey would review wine from his bedroom. One night, a month or so ago he was on Conan O’Brien plugging his book. I thought, “how neat, a regular guy writing a book about wine”.