Red And White

OMG, OMG, OMG. I just discovered my new favorite place. There was a wine shop over near the Kohl's where I went a few times to pick up a bottle of this and that. A colleague at work told me they sometimes have events and stuff, and I signed up on their website but haven't heard much. And then they were moving. It turns out they were moving to the end store of a strip mall just down the road from me, technically I could probably walk there. Wine bar in walking distance - sounded cool, so when construction started, and then I saw the landscaping start to go in, and trucks outside for days in a row, I was watching closely for the opening day.

I thought of dropping by a few different times, but tonight I actually did it. I wasn't sure if a wine place would be appropriate for a girl on her own just stopping for a drink after work, but I dared myself to try it. "Just try it," I dared myself. "If it's really not the kind of place you do to drink on your own, just buy a bottle of something for the stockpile at home and walk on out again."

It's such an unlikely location - more or less in the parking lot of a Best Buy. But in this kind of town (in this kind of country), you can just never pick where you going to find a little oasis of wonderfulness.

You walk in. There is a couple at the bar, three people at a high round table, little square tables in the back. There is atmospheric jazz, and although you can look out on the hot sun, freeway ramp and a parked trailer, inside you are transported away from Highway-side Wisconsin. The bar is a lovely red marble. The wood trim is black. The waiter is smiling at your and holding out a menu bound in sturdy black leather, with a selection of whites on one page, reds on the other (reds first, that's important), that shows that they actually know what they're talking about. Behind is a fridge/dispensing mechanism with bottles perfectly positioned before and between, that shows those reds are being attentively kept at precisely 54 degrees. (or I might have that number wrong, will have to check next time I'm in).

I sidle up to the bar and say, "Do you have a list of whites...by the glass?" In the ellipses I commit to sitting down there, and getting out my New Yorker to read if I need to (which I would have done at Starbucks which was the other option but their outdoor chairs aren't in the sun, not that that mattered in the end). He tells me I can try anything I like. I order a Pinot Blanc from somewhere in France, and a tiny sip comes - I realize this is to try, not to order. I do, and it tastes of pear, as the menu suggests, but it's too peary for me, so I decide to try another one. I end up with a full glass of a Sauv Blanc from New Zealand, a Marlborough one that's not actually on the menu, but it does the trick on the first hot summer day - citrussy, crisp, dry but flavorful, just what I was after. I order some cheese and crackers too, and get enough to feed a family of 6 for several days. Fortunately they let you take stuff home, in this land.

A few more people arrive and the waiter is serving them and walking from side to side, seems to greet everyone or attend to them right at the moment they have a question.

He's left the menu for me to peruse so I never do get the New Yorker out (a prop, camouflage). I decide to try to memorize everything on there but just keep reading the top Riesling over and over.

And then I notice the most important thing. They're serving the wine in Reidel glasses. These are the most wonderful wine glasses in the whole world, and people who use them in their restaurant show that they know what they're doing. Reidel carries a different glass shape for every grape out of which they make wine, and I did a test one time during the brief period that I owned some of these (they break if you look at them funny, it ends up being a very high cost per use), and it does make a huge difference. If you drink a Cab Sav out of just whatever glass, it tastes good, don't get me wrong, but if you drink one out of a Reidel Burgundy-Cab Sav glass, it's just a different experience altogether. From the moment you put your nose near it you are having different and more textured and robust experiences (to borrow a word from a co-worker that was just the right word in a meeting today). And these folks not only have a very wide, varied and interesting wine list, with all the trendy things from Chile and Argentina as well as a selection of Aussie and New Zealand stuff to make me feel at home, they served everything in Reidel stemware. OMG.

The place emptied out, the people sitting outside on the deck didn't need much attention, I was getting through my paid-for glass, and I started asking the waiter questions. The first question was why cheddar cheese in Australia has crystals in it but in the US not, did it have to do with pastuerization, but he didn't know that. But the next questions were all about wine, and I started tasting little tastes of things. I would ask about two Pinots, and he would tell me which one he liked better, and then he would give me a little glass of both, so I could compare, and then we'd talk about it at some length.

And of course we got on to the story-of-life, how-did-you-end-up-here conversation, which is always so interesting. Turns out he went to the CIA because he loved to cook as his mother taught him to, but he hated kitchen work, and transfered to Baking and Pastry and loved that, so now he does wedding cakes, what would you say, freelance, and works at this new wine place.

We had a great talk, I tasted lots and lots of great wines. I was appreciating my previous education, in that absolute world center of ambitious wine-making, Australia, and in that center of revolutionary modern cuisine, downtown Sydney.

It was also great to have such a good outcome from one little brave change of scenery and experiment.