I have a scenario in my head: I’m at a swanky dinner party, charming my table companions with enthralling tails and quick wit, when our waiter comes over to take our drink orders. I glance quickly at the wine list before proclaiming with utmost authority, “Bring us a bottle of the ‘94 Chateau Margaux.” Seeing they are obviously impressed by my knowledge of fine wines, I tell my new friends that “1994 was an excellent year on the French Southwestern coastal region.”

Fading back to reality, my knowledge of wine is unsophisticated to say the least. Many of my fondest memories of wine involve wines of the boxed variety. And how could I forget those late nights at the newspaper office sipping swigging Avia Chardonnay from a plastic cup over page layouts. At $5 a bottle, Avia is self described as delivering “value wine” from the hills of western Slovenia for over 25 years. Let the good times roll!

But recently I’ve begun a personal wine-tasting campaign designed to — if not increase my snobbery — at least add a little bit to my knowledge of wines. I’ve started by purchasing a bottle each week — each time of a new variety — from the wonderful Stew Leonard’s Wine Shop in Norwalk. Now six bottles into my journey towards sophisticate I’ve also decided to keep a log of my tastings on this site for everyone to enjoy!

More coming soon!

Last week Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite author and a man the New York Times once aptly described as a “laughing prophet of doom,” died at 84. If you’ve never read Vonnegut, do yourself a favor and go get Slaughterhouse 5 or Cats Cradle ASAP.

A less publicized passing just a few weeks prior was that of Calvert DeForest, aka Larry ‘Bud’ Melman, made famous by David Letterman. Calvert once described his first appearance on Late Night as “the greatest thing that had happened in my life.”

So it goes.

In a fascinating sociological experiment that overflows with commentary on the nature of our daily lives, the Washington Post asks Joshua Bell, a virtuoso violinist, to play — unannounced and incognito — in a Washington D.C. Metro station for forty-five minutes during the morning rush hour.

By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.
…
Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston’s stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.