Tag: Wine

The Wine has arrived

· 1 Comment ·

So yesterday I did a round trip of 30 miles to retrieve our quarterly shipment of wine. At a Walgreens store in Attleboro, MA.

Here’s the wine:

20180414_133542

Brought the Girasole on the right to a friends house last night. Good wine.

 

And you might note the Scout and Cellar labels on the wines. So long as you don’t live in Rhode Island or Kentucky you can get it shipped right to your door.

20180414_173229.jpg

So no synthetic pesticides. That raises a slight alarm with me – there are in fact organic pesticides. But researching it allays the fears.

As the claim of being Wildly Delicious and Distinctive – I can agree. That Girasole we drank last night was quite good.

Now from old growth vines – ok. Tended by people and not mass produced.  They’ve got UPC codes on them. Tried scanning them with my phone but they’re very imprecise so there’s that. I suppose I could google them. But I know how easy it is to get a UPC code for an item. Part of my career was spent doing just that. So we’ll give this one a pass.

Now the claim commercial wines can have 16G of sugar vs. 0 added in these wines – yeah we can tell it’s very smooth and good. If a wine needs added sugar – they’ve failed. Which is why I like the wines from Scout and Cellar.

The chemicals claim – put it this way humans survive by chemosynthesis. We take in food stuff and liquids and chemicals in our body break them down into other chemicals. So we’re going to call this pure marketing fluff to the ignorant masses.

Now the final three claims I have to accept since I don’t have the methods to test it myself, other than tasting it and some anecdotal evidence that the red wines don’t give people headaches after drinking it. That’s likely the Sulfites. So one of the three can be verified to a lesser degree.

All in all well worth it. High quality basically organic wine – averages about $26 per bottle. It’s worth the premium knowing we’re getting good wine, that we’re helping out our friend so all in all a good deal.

Shipment of Wine and Spirits in RI

· Leave a comment ·

So went to a wine tasting at a friends home in Massachusetts yesterday. And the company doing the wine selling – they cannot ship to Rhode Island residences.

So I dashed an email to my representative, senator and speaker of the house. In addition I’ve posted on facebook and twitter to contact your representatives and let them know we’re not happy about that.

So now I have to go in Attleboro, MA to get my wine. Ut si! I can transport it across state lines but Fedex and UPS can’t? What the bloody fuck.

If you are a RI registered voter you can go to the RI Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea’s page and enter your name, address or zip code and your DOB and it’ll tell you who your elected representative are including their contact info  – call, email, write. Let them know this is not cool and that we are being INCONVENIENCED by this stupid ban.  And if you want to research your Representatives or Senators go to the RILIN site.

But if you live in Rhode Island let your elected officials know this isn’t cool to block shipments of wine and spirits to residential addresses.

The Xmas Holiday

· 2 Comments ·

So we spent the holiday with friends. Much better that way. I’m kind of glad most of my family spewed to the four winds. I recall those days as being pretty boring, though the summer visits were cool as I learned how to garden from my grandfather.

But back on subject I’ll start with the food:

We had started buying the ingredients for the antipasto and four dozen ravioli. Two dozen were lobster ravioli, the one each of basil and the crab ravioli. We figured we’d stick with a seafood scheme for the eve.

The antipasto consisted of pepperoni, stuffed cherry peppers, roasted green olives, an assortment of olives with things like blue cheese stuffing, etc. along with artichoke hearts. We also had little crostini with bruschetta sauce and Asiago cheese on them. (And it sucks that Firefox’s dictionary doesn’t include Italian terminology but I have rectified that by adding the words to the dictionary!)

For Christmas day it was pastry we’d gotten from LaSalle Bakery. How do I explain this, the bakery has been around forever. It was there when I was in high school thirty years ago, and it’s still there. I had a blueberry muffin from them that was awesome – the muffin wasn’t dry – nice and moist and delicious. Then I tried the cannoli, the filling wasn’t too dense or gritty at all. Nice, smooth and tasty. If you’re in the Providence, RI area I strongly suggest you pay them a visit, they’re at the corner of Academy Ave and Smith St., diagonally across from my alma mater LaSalle Academy.

For dinner we had picked up a nice stuffed beef roast from Venda. In fact we got most of the ingredients of the antipasto from them too. We roasted the beef with carrots, pearl onions, leeks, and fingerling potatoes.

And the wines – before Christmas dinner we had a couple glasses of a nice Italian sparkling wine, then at dinner we had a bottle from our friends daughter and then one we’d picked up at Trader Joe’s up in Foxborough, MA.

I feel I should put an open note to Rhode Island Legislators, make it so supermarkets and stores can carry beer and wine. Kind of ridiculous that in MA you can get your favorite in a supermarket, but not here in RI.

Anyhow – to the gifts. One of my gifts was sort of a gag but appropriate – it’s a Monty Python’s Flying Circus “It’s Only A Flesh Wound” t-shirt from the Holy Grail movie. Another of my gifts is a ice comfy pair of Acorn slippers – that was driven by a picture of me in my robe on Facebook. Also got a three bottle wine rack with the wine to fill it 2/3’s the way. Now that I know about the Trader Joe’s in Foxborough though – you can get good wines really cheap there so I see a wine cellar in my future. Also got a Ralph Lauren overcoat.

So not a bad holiday in casa Truthspew.