Booze run
I'm too lazy to trek all the way to Modern Liquors over on 9th Street. I could buy wine at the Giant but I really don't like my birthdate displayed on the register for everyone to see. So when I needed to stock up on wine and other spirits I wandered to something a bit closer, Bloomingdale Liquors on Rhode Island.Yes, I know there are two other liquor stores closer to my house but I'm not going to them. For one, I hate going into places like that. Everything, and I mean everything is behind the bullet proof glass in the closer liquor stores. The shopping experience is demeaning. Maybe it is okay for your classic ghetto wino picking up his Peaches & Cream flavor of MD 20/20, but not me. I hate the bullet proof glass, more so when it looks like it hasn't been cleaned. Second, neither of the two closest liquor stores carry wine I can cook with. Arbor Mist and Boon's Farm are really not worth making a garlic wine sauce with and I don't consider them to be real wines.
I'm not a wine snob. My stock wine is Trader Joe's $2 Buck (really more $3) Chuck. A Kendell-Jackson would be fine. Sutter Home would be good too. I'm not asking for $20-$50 bottles, which I'd never buy because I'm also cheap, but I want wine that isn't wino wine.
So I went to Bloomingdale Liquors at 1st and Rhode Island. Yes, there is the bullet proof glass but there are also aisles of product I can closely look at and compare. And I did compare a bottle of Captain Morgan rum with Barcardi. I also picked up a shiraz. I could have picked up a merlot, some white or red table wine, or sherry. Most important to me as a shopper, I got to pick them, look at the bottles and decided whether or not I should buy. Not looking through some obscured glass trying to determine if that bottle on the far shelf is something I want.
posted by Mari @ 29.7.05
8 Comments:
If you changed your tack and made beer battered chicken with Steel Reserve you could have saved yourself a few blocks on the walk.
Justin
Justin,
I'm not much of a chicken cooker. "Steel Reserve"? Aren't they those silver cans with red and black writing I see crushed along the sidewalk and in the treeboxes?
I'm no wine snob either, but I just don't understand how folks can drink that Two Buck Chuck swill. I've given it at least two chances. Tastes like Listerine to me. Yeauuch. I think you need to spend at least $4.50 on a bottle of wine. ;)
I mainly buy it because I do a lot of cooking with wine. I need more of a cooking wine than a drinking wine. The lamb/thyme/garlic dish I like to cook can make me run through a bottle very quickly, so I tend to buy the Chuck.
I used to buy the big bottles of Taylor port wine, very low end stuff, for a dish that required cups & cups of port. I would never, ever, used Sandman or any other higher end port for cooking. Seems like a waste when you're mainly trying to reduce the sauce and all.
When I think of it, I do buy drinking wines at Whole Foods while I'm gettin' my granola.
Of course if you are at 1st and RI you can wander across the street to Windows and pick up a bottle of pretty decent wine. Small selection, but a range of quality (Australian, Italian, Napa) up to $25 a bottle. And no bullet-proof plastic.
- JM
I usually hit the little wine shop next to the Whole Foods for my cooking wines; they have good cream sherries and Madeira there. For some reason, WF$ doesn't seem to carry either.
(I go through a ginormous amount of sherry. The aroma it gives off when it hits a hot pan of mushrooms is totally droolworthy.)
That market on 4th and...I think...has decent wine.
Okay tried the Alice White red wine I bought and well..... it had no legs. It could have been the glass but I didn't see any legs when swirling it around. I've got a phyiscally disabled wine! As far as taste, it is not a drinking wine, but as far as I can tell it will make a decent cooking wine. Or maybe I'll make a sangria with it. Any simple recipies calling for obscene amounts of red wine?
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