Wine Truth: by Michael Dominic

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 want to announce my video podcast. Every week I make a video pertaining to wine. So far I’ve just reviewed wines, but in the future I will do other things like talking to experts, visiting vineyards and other stuff. Yeah, other stuff.

If you click on the podcast link below it should bring you to my page in iTunes. There you can subscribe to my feed, and my videos will automatically be downloaded free. Then you can watch me on your iPod or iPhone wherever you are.

Friday the weather finally cooled down a little making the City a little more bearable, so by the time I arrived at Alphabet City Wine Co. I wasn’t as exhausted and dehydrated as usual.

Zach was was working today, but the tasting was being run by Beth, a rep from the distributor of the wine that they were pouring. Sometimes a rep will tell you that the motor oil that they’re passing off as wine is the great, when it’s barely, or not at all, drinkable. With Beth this was not the case. She seemed to genuinely like and be interested in the wine she was hocking, two reds and one white from Spain.

One of the apps that just came out amongst the hordes of apps for the iPhone is Wine log, a simple note taking program that allows you to keep perfect notes on any wine you come across. It even lets you take a photo to attach to the profile.

This is way more convenient than taking notes in a moleskin notebook and trying to decipher my handwriting later. The only drawback is that I can’t send anything entered to myself or anyone else by email. Nor can I download the picture taken in the app. I can however easily take the picture first and attach it to the wines notes. I hope future versions will add more functionality, but at $2.99 this is a great app that will make my life easier.

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 went out with her friend to see Arsenic and Old Lace in Bryant Park. Every summer Bryant Park shows films on Monday nights. It’s one of the great things about New York City …I never go.

So being stag I decided to grill out on my fire escape. This of course is completely illegal but I’ve done it for the past two years without any hindrance. I have a Weber Baby Q right outside one of my living room windows. When I grill I just open the window and lean out. Weber doesn’t pay me anything to say this, but the Weber Baby Q is just as fine a grill as any of their larger models.

When Ting left for the film I headed over to the Whole Foods at Union Square. There I bought a 1.43 lbs bone-in rib steak and some corn. when I returned home I seasoned the corn with olive oil, cayenne pepper, salt, paprika and threw them on the grill. On the steak just a little olive oil and salt. I don’t like to over season a good piece of meat.