August 2008 Newsletter

Lemonade used to be the antidote for the dog days of summer. My sister had the stand, I was too cool as an 8 year old to help her work it. I lurked nearby lest any wiseacre 6 or 7 year old came by to drink on the house or steal the 8 cents in the coffee cup. I didn’t have a plan for the 11-year-olds from the other end of the block if they came by to cause some bother. I had a can of beer hidden in the weeds nearby, but I didn’t want to sacrifice the beer to a bunch of dangerous 11-year-olds that would have taken the Pabst and the lemonade too. Yet I stood guard over someone who didn’t know she was being guarded, My reward? Probably the warm lemonade that didn’t sell. My duties as guard were only relieved when her girlfriends came by. No self-respecting dude of any grade school age would risk the reputation of harassing silly girls and then stealing their lemonade. The gaggle of girls was protection enough, and I was free then to roam the neighborhood, the scourge of anything that crawled, flied, swam, or ran slower than I did.

This summer, at our adult only lemonade stand here at European Wine Imports Inc., we are adding flavors and sizes. My spin is that wine comes in bottles too indulgent for one (although sometimes I consider a 750 to be an individual serving) and too spartan for two. We are offering Chateau owned large format bottles in their original wood cases. These huge bottles (from 9 to 18 litres) are used strictly for Chateau parties, but because Franck, (our company’s Sarkozy) has moved up to the “A” list of importers in the US, we have access to these spectacular bargains. Please call us or email for more information on these investment wines from Bordeaux. Perfect for any large family event that is not your own funeral. 

If the month is August, it is fall already. Any normal wine drinker is already cheating away from the prescribed summer wines and getting into the wines that don’t lack anything in deference to the heat of summer. 

Our Fall Collection begins with an Indiana Jones type wine, a Pomerol, Chateau des Templiers, 2003, or the Chateau of The Knights of the Templar.  Originally, this group of only nine knights had few financial resources and relied on donations to survive. Their emblem was of two knights riding on a single horse, highlighting the Order's poverty, and probably entitled the knights to ride in the high occupancy lane along the Appian Way. The label on our rare import however, features two big sails on a ship, which shows the success of both the knights and the vineyard during the last thousand years.  We are  allocated only 60 bottles of this intense wine, so if you want some of this adventure and history, act soon, as this will be gone before September. $59.99 at your favorite wine store.

The next new arrival on our runway is from the same designer, Jean-Claude Fabris. Domaine du Petit Brouard, 2005, is from Lalande Pomerol, the land of gravelly, sandy and clayey soil that is ideal for the Merlot that makes up 80% of Petit Brouard. Three years ago, the news that Fabris’ wines are organic would have killed the brand. The truth is, they always have been organic, nothing has changed in the Fabris family winemaking process for hundreds of years. But now we may mention with pride that no pests were harmed in the making of these wines. $34.99 at your local Organic Wine Retailer.

Not too far away, a little further east in Bordeaux is the Cotes de Castillon. There is an appeal to the Cotes de Castillon statistic; 22 million bottles produced--no white wine. Chateau du Puit Parre is our new arrival from the Cotes de Castillon, a red wine, of course, actually, a deep purple opaque wine, with a sense of address that is even to the right of the right bank. It comes at you in bits and pieces, some black fruits, a bit of anise, a dose of tannin and a finish that hurries one into another sip. $17.99 usually doesn’t buy a wine of this quality. This is the Merlot that could have changed the plot of the movie ‘Sideways’.

Now that the dock strike is over in Paris, we are getting our backlog of containers all at once.

Marvin Scott and his warehouse crew deserve mention for the excellent job they did putting up three months worth of wine in a week. Ted King deserves props for helping Marvin and crew on the docks after his long days on his delivery route. They both had their own tow motors; we are past our beginning Templar days of two riders on one tow motor.