Wine Truth: by Michael Dominic

Saturday night was the Pacquiao vs. Cotto fight, and as usual when there is a big fight on I invite friends over and I make a big meal of some sort. Tonight it was just me, my wife and my friend Jake. Jake is the son of a woman that I was with for three years, years ago. Jake and I were always close and even though until recently he lived in Colorado, we were always in touch. Now that he’s attending NYU I have the opportunity to see him more often.

There is fine wine, table wine and then there is bum wine. I’ve only every had the displeasure of tasting Thunderbird once when I was in college, but there’s a whole wealth of low-grade, high alcohol wines out there for the discerning bum. Luckily for them there is bumwine.com (if they ever get to a computer). Bumwine.com covers the main selection of swill with images, descriptions and even rankings of which gets you the most wasted.

When I first saw this I thought I might try a few and give notes on them here as a joke—but I’ll leave that honor for bumwine.com.

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.

To illustrate my general ignorance, only today, for the first time I heard of Morrell & Company Wines. Being that they opened their doors in 1947, and are literally three blocks away from my office, that’s pretty pathetic on my part. But you can’t cry over spilled wine, so I decided to make an afternoon dash a few blocks north.

When I entered the shop, right at the front they were having a tasting. They were pouring one Californian white and one Spanish red.

I’m having some problems with my camera so there are some technical problems. The sound drops out at times. I am working to fix this.

I was supposed to post my weekly video today, but my DV deck is not working. I borrowed one from work and I will have episode #4 up tomorrow morning.

Today I want to give you a list of my favorite wine shops on and off-line.

Ting and I went to visit my closest friends, Rob, Amanda and baby Mina in the wilds of Brooklyn (two stops out of Manhattan on the L train) yesterday afternoon. The weather was hot and dry, so I decided to bring something cold and dry. A bottle of 2007 – Gianni Gagliardo, Fallegro ($19). I bought this wine at a tasting a few weeks earlier. I was pleased to find a white that I actually like. I usually stick to dry reds and find most white to be sickly sweet.

We arrived at their apartment about 3pm. I stuck the Fallegro in their refrigerator to keep it cool. My friends handed me a bag. Inside was a box with a beautiful Bormioli Rocco decanter. I was moved that they had given me a gift for my birthday, and one to compliment my newest obsession.