Safe

I saw Safe tonight. I liked it. A lot. I still love relatively smart action films.

My two favorite whites tonight

Calcari is Xarello. Do you know WTF Xarello is? No? That's totally cool. It's a grape. It's a minerally, fairly dry, crazy amazing grape. If you see this on a wine list, forget about pairing, just buy it! Ours is from Perés Balta.

Then, holy shit! Felicité from Aarde Valley in South Africa tastes like an islay whiskey. Un-fucking-believable. It's smokey like a lapsang souchong but it's white, and you know what? It's Chardonnay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And get this: It's unoaked!!!!!!!¡!!!!¡! So amazing.

Radio Lab

I'm in love with RadioLab. In case you didn't know, I'm kind of a nerd, and I like being that way. It's a show about curiosity, and I'm a curious person. If you don't know about RadioLab, go to their website and download all of their podcasts and listen to them while eating a dinner late at night. I listen to RadioLab when I wake up and eat "breakfast," and my wife and I listen to the podcasts together when we get home late at night.

 You will LOVE RadioLab if you like thinking.

Drinking Liberally

We host Drinking Liberally at the Darjeeling Café every month. Normally, I have to work on those nights, running around a lot, serving, but last night we had enough people on to make possible for me to hang out with all the liberals. We talked about the local elections, and we talked about the coming big time election in November, but we also talked about all sorts of other things. I got a little drunk on wine.

One of the conversations we had was about Richmond. I like Richmond a lot. But downtown Richmond is kind of a ghost town. It doesn't make sense to me. It seems like the perfect place to open a restaurant. There's a big college, and there's the capitol. Doesn't that mean there are tons of eaters? Why is everyone going to lunch carts in Richmond? The restaurants I went to Richmond were all empty if they weren't chains, and the lunch carts were slammed. I loved the independent restaurants I went to. So what gives? We didn't really get to answer it.

Anyway, Drinking Liberally is totally great. I wish I could hang out more often with the liberals who come to drink. They are open and friendly, and they are interested and curious, and I like them.

Here's a link if you want to know more about Drinking Liberally.

Our New Wine Bar

Our new wine bar is under construction. Scottie Scott is building it in Staunton out of local walnut. It will have rounded edges and be totally beautiful.

We were at the workshop yesterday checking everything out, seeing the progress, and I snapped some pictures with the iPhone so I could share it with all of you. We're supremely excited.

We'll be having a grand opening of the wine bar on the 25th of May. Woo-hoo!

This is the story board for the project.

You can sort of see how it's coming together in this shot.

I can't wait for all of you to see it!