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It’s been a long time… you thought I left you

Thursday, August 21, 2008

It’s actually been quite awhile since I wrote the last diary entry, and in that time, I really have been busy. I am trying to negotiate several business deals, have attended a very nice event in Baltimore (The Baltimore Chefs and Wine Extravaganza; or something like that), been to at least four wine tastings, and discovered and tried some new things. And of course, I made a lot of connections along the way.

For the last two weeks, I have been inundated with things, so I have been lax in adding reviews, but I did add three of them yesterday. I am thinking about adding another aspect to look at wine on the site, and I will have the figured out by the end of today and implement it by Monday. Additionally, I have been thinking to move back the contest drawing date to the beginning of November, as to also promote the website while I am at the Congressional Black Caucus this September.

But the biggest thing has been in having the attitude to keep going on no matter what. As I said before, this is a totally independent effort, for which it is being funded out of pocket, and that’s not always an easy thing, especially when one is not rich and has no patrons; maybe I’ll have to start putting my photography out there again.

However, I did receive a good feeling that I was still doing the right thing, while stopping in on a bartender that I know last night. The plan was for me and another bartender to hang out at a new restaurant called Maia, which is located in Villanova, PA. Another bartender that we know and love currently works there. The décor of this place is fantastic, both inside and outside, and it’s in a great location; right at the intersection of two major thorofares. As I perused the wine list, I was surprised to see that they had Ironstone Obsession Symphony, a lovely sweet wine that I have been drinking for at least five to six years. In fact, this was only the second place for me to ever see it carried. I was introduced to another former co-worker of Timmy’s, and we got into a nice conversation of wines, what the place he works at carries, and I gave him some good suggestions and resources of some other things. By the end of my time there, I had also connected with Rich Furino, the general manager of Sullivan’s steakhouse. I can’t remember how our conversation started, but it was a good one nonetheless, comprising talk of a very good Masi Amarone, other Masi wines (I just happened across their Modello Bianco Delle Venezie) such as their Masianco and their Campofiorin (it needs another five years of aging in the bottle). We talked of dessert wines, and of what each other did, and exchanged business cards.

In that time at Maia, I felt a renewed sense of purpose in what I am doing, or attempting to do, or slowly accomplishing, whatever you want to call it. It was great to be able to just sit there and talk to people in regards to wine, and our choices and loves, regardless of race, sex, color, creed, gender or agenda, which is what I want a lot of us to feel and do, no matter what we are.

After that, I took a drive down to Panorama and had a couple of glasses of vino and chatted with the bartender and the owner. While at the bar, I happened across a couple that contained/featured a woman who used to bartend at Panorama herself. Our connection was a wine from Australia called Lilly Pilly, which I had never heard of, but when looking at it on the menu, it said that it was a noble wine. I remarked that I had just written an article on dessert wines and guessed that that must have been the noble rot method. She replied that the Australians can’t necessarily be trusted in their labeling system, and identified the two wines on the list from there that did use the noble rot method (for those that don’t know, it is a way to remove water from a dessert wine i

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Our Mission: The Black Winer strives to expose African Americans [and others] to wines, without the flair, stuffiness, and airs of elitism and snobbery that you get from sommeliers and high level wine enthusiasts. We believe in finding something that you like the taste of, outside of the basic brands that you have been force-fed over the years through a combination of ethnically targeted advertising, and what people in your family have historically been drinking.

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