Blessed with Bacon

I received my holiday gift early from the Grand Poobah - a bacon sampler from the Grateful Palate.   The four bacons I received are: Nodine's  Smokehouse 10 garlic clove and Nodine's Double Smoked from CT; Edwards Cinnamon Apple Virginia Bacon; Loveless Cafe's Hot and Spicy Jalapeño bacon from Nashville; and Oscar's Applewood Smoked from NY. Having  visited the Loveless Cafe years ago, this bacon has brought back special memories.  You must go there for the biscuits, jam, bacon and nostalgia.  The celebrity photos and stories are worth the trip alone.

We started with Nodine's 10 clove garlic bacon for the past two days.  This is a slab of bacon cured with a garlic emulsion and actual whole cloves of garlic studded in the meat. The perfume has made my house smell, well heavenly, thus instructing the family not to open any windows or doors in the house to best preserve the aromas as long as possible.  I am not sure how to describe this bacon.  My writing skills won't do it justice.  It's like writing about your first kiss 

or my first sip of a Cote Rotie.  Two loves, two passions combined into one - garlic and bacon.  I may have to save the fat and put a little on my wrists before going to work each day.  This bacon has a subtle sweetness followed by mellowed sublime garlic flavors which leads to a smoked finish.  Absolutely divine, this is a dream come true.  If you haven't figured out what to give the foodie in your family consider this bacon sampler.  I now know how much the Grand Poobah really loves me.  

Maybe 2009 should be the year Wine Authorities gets into the specialty bacon business?  We could fly in 1 lb slabs from around the country and sell them to other Durham bacon lovers. - Salamanzar

Rare FORMAGGIO TORO UBRIACO (drunken bull cheese) arrives!

Durham cheese maker Alessandra Trompeo has quickly received much international acclaim representing American raw cheese makers at the Slow Food Terre Madre event in Turin, Italy. Her "Duchessa" is our best selling cheese and she is a helluva nice lady to boot. We are proud to be the exclusive source for her latest cheese, Toro Ubriaco, or "Drunken Bull" in honor of our fair Bull City!

This cow's milk cheese is an aromatic, washed rind cheese, encased in Sangiovese must (the skins and seeds left over after the red wine making process) so it imparts a winey, fruity taste. Four and a half months in the making, we are extremely excited to debut this exotic, complex cheese starting today. It is made in one pound squares with grape skins intact and cut in half to show the inside and make it a more convenient size for couples. The cost is $21.99/pound (about $11 a piece).

ALESSANDRA HAS MADE ONLY 25 OF THESE CHEESES (50 halves). So please come soon if you are interested in getting some. They will sell out quickly!

Here's Alessandra's notes on the history of this type of cheese:

"The Drunken Bull has its origin in Eastern Italy.  Several folk stories tell how the cheese was born. Someone links its origin to WWI when the farmers, trying to defend their stocks from the soldiers’ raids, would hide the cheese under grape skins. Others think that lack of resources is the main reason why the cheese was born. Being the oil to treat the cheese rinds very expensive, several families of farmers would use grape skins to keep the rinds moist and clean. The result was a very aromatic cheese that would last much longer.
There is also a story about a crooked cheesemaker who tried to hide some wheels from his boss dumping them into a fermenting must barrel. The cheese became then the strong point of that dairy and soon the trick of aging the cheese in grape skins became a habit in many dairies of the area."

Way Over Due

Hi there and I apologize for the blog being left behind in the last month.  We are way over due for an entry.  November and December are the two busiest retail wine months and while that's not a great excuse, it's our reality.  

The "State of Things" radio show's impact has been tremendous and we welcome all the new customers streaming in from around the Triangle and beyond.  We are truly flattered and humbled by the number of people who have come to the store because they heard us on the radio and actually thought we sounded all right.  As our good friend Sally put it, "we really have a face for radio."  

More importantly we are getting our message out.  We make no claim that all things corporate are bad.  Heck we are an LLC and the wineries we represent are for-profit entities.  It's also difficult for someone to change paradigms when there is not immediate physical evidence to prove the contrary.  If we had a bottle of wine with an ingredient list that read like a Twinkie wrapper vs. a second bottle which stated, "made from grapes," the evidence would be compelling.  Or if we had a person take a sip of wine and immediately start to convulse and then take a sip from another bottle and feel fine, we would really have something.  But the reality is that we eat and drink things which don't necessarily have immediate short term effects and therefore we don't really see the harm or necessarily believe the item is "bad" for us even though long term effects can be considered harmful.

Probably the most compelling evidence we see on a day to day level are the people who claim no headaches or ill effects while drinking wine in small towns of Europe, but have serious side effects when coming back to the States and drinking a large corporate wine from a grocery store.  We all have our sensitivity levels and tolerance levels.  Some feel it, some don't.  

The simple beauty of wine is that you actually can make it from grapes.  Using the other additives are not necessary.  That should be argument enough.  For example, if you could buy an apple pie made from apples, flour, butter, sugar and spices vs. the pie made with loads of stabilizers, emulsifiers, and preservatives, and they both taste good, both cost the same, why choose the chemically added pie?

Maybe we need to have a 30 day challenge.  If you currently drink some of the big brand wines on a regular basis, try drinking anyone's small producer, family owned wine for 30 days and see how you feel.  Of course the opposite would work too, but I won't suggest drinking a Big Liquor Company (BLC) brand for 30 days.  I already know how you will feel.   Would John McEnroe be our spokesperson? - Salamanzar

Our first Live Broadcast Wine Tasting Dec 4

Coming December 4th you can watch and taste with us live on the internet.  We have three wines for you to purchase, take home, invite your friends to a wine tasting party and we'll taste together from our "living room" in the store to yours.

$3 Wal Mart Wine

In the Dallas news there is an article showing the results of an informal taste test for Walmart's $2.97 bottles of Oak Leaf wine.  I have not tasted the wine and don't intend to anytime soon.  If you do read the article, and I hope you do, be sure to read all the way through including the follow ups on who makes the wine, the other brands they make, and then the scores and comments.  The comment about the alcohol levels being moderate makes me think the wines could be a touch sweet, and that makes sense if you want to appeal to a large group.  Look at Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio and Kendall Jackson Chardonnay.  Both of these are very popular and on the sweet side.  Why do all these BLC (Big Liquor Company) brands come up with names using "leaf" in them? - Salamanzar

Blu Seafood Wine Dinner

On Wednesday, October 15th, we participated in a scary wine dinner with Chef/owner Tim and GM Eryk at Blu Seafood in Durham.  The event was supposed to be in costume with scary food and wine.  Actually most people showed up out of costume, but the food was outstanding and the wines were tasting great with Tim's menu.  Here's a slide show from the event.

WA in the news

We have been very fortunate to have a couple of mentions in local newsprint recently.  First, the Independent Weekly, had an article by Jane Hobson Snyder titled, "Planning the Perfect Fall Picnic."  Jane interviewed Chef John Toller of Bloomsbury Bistro, Chief Concierge Christopher Gould of Umstead Hotel and Salamanzar.  Second, the News & Observer featured our Enomatic self-serve wine tasting machine in an article by Amber Nimocks.  The article, "Expensive Tastes by the Glass," discusses our machine and mentions other wine shops with similar machines in the area.  The Enomatic is from Italy and is the original, but now there is a competing machine from CA called the Wine Station.   Also, we were interviewed on Thursday for Market Watch magazine for an upcoming issue.  Regular readers know that's my favorite magazine for beverage industry fodder.  -Salamanzar

Indy photo by DL Anderson; Enomatic photo by Larry Gottschalk