AVV: May 2008 Archives
CHICAGO, IL-April 30 Our son Robert tried to talk us into driving all the way to Chicago last night, but we had reached our limit after 12 hours in the car and stopped at one of the few motel exists in Ohio.
We were close enough so this morning, we didn't even have to set an alarm to wake up. In fact, we actually arrived a little early for our trade lunch. We killed an hour by window shopping although Hank is not too fun to shop with. He mostly enjoyed checking prices and being shocked by them.
Lunch was at Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab in downtown Chicago. We had 18 at the lunch in a private room including a couple of employees from Heritage, our Illinois distributor, and several accounts. I had eaten here before with Robert several years ago and the food was as good as I remember. Several of us ordered the stone crabs and we were pleased to see how well both the CYRUS and the Alexander School Cabernet Sauvignon went with them. The nicest surprise was that Jerry Hirsch, who started Heritage more than 25 years ago, was able to join us. It was so good to see him. We have such a long history with him and Heritage Wine Cellars and he has always been such a good supporter of our wines. Happy birthday, Jerry! (Today is also Hank's mother Maggie's
birthday).After lunch, we visited with Vincent Feola from Texas de Brazil, a growing chain of Brazilian steakhouses. They are opening an 800 seat restaurant in downtown Chicago and are in the midst of putting together the wine list. They have sold a lot of AVV wines in their other restaurants. From there, we visited Lauren Domenech at Randolph Wine Cellars. They have a great wine shop west of Chicago's Loop and a beautiful wine bar (The Tasting Room) next door. We tasted her on a few wines and she especially liked the Redemption Zin. From there, it was on to Sam's Wines & Spirits for a California Wine Tasting event from 5 until 8.
After Sam's we headed to Harry Carey's to meet our daughter-in-law Kim for dinner. Hank thought his filet was the best he has ever had. The other highlight was that Ernie Banks, the baseball Hall of Famer, was sitting right across from us. We were tempted to asked for an autograph, but he was so surrounded by fans, we hated to bother him.
SOMEWHERE IN PENNSYLVANIA-April 29 This will be a long driving day. According to our GPS we have about 750 miles and 15 1/5 hours to get to Chicago. Thankfully the weather has improved although it's still cold. The best part is we are now really heading west!
I realized today that one of the reasons Hank and I have been getting along so much better on this trip than in previous ones is our GPS. This A.M., in order to try to avoid the traffic into New York, we ignored the GPS
instructions and went back to the handy old map. While I believe I am a fairly good map reader, Hank begs to differ and so we had a few tense moments today as I tried to maneuver him around traffic with alternate routes. We did finally succeed in this endeavor and we are now back on the GPS system and sailing through beautiful Pennsylvania on Interstate 80.NEW HAVEN. CT-April 28 Back on the road at 6 this morning. We have covered 5,338 miles. While Hank says we are now on our way home, according to the map, we are still heading east, actually northeast. We met one of our longtime distributors, Fritz Reisser for lunch in Park Ridge in northern New Jersey. It was nice to have a visit in his neck of the woods, it felt more like we were just a few old friends getting together.
We ate at Esty Street where they are serving our Sangiovese by the glass. The owner, Scott Tremble, has been a big supporter of AVV for a long time, pouring most of our varietals at one time or another including the Cabernet and CYRUS. We enjoyed talking to him and his wife and we had a lot in common since they are Cornell grads just like our son and daughter, Kevin and Margaret, and their son is now attending there.
The traffic up to New Haven where we were headed to see Margaret, was terrible along with the weather, so it was a tough drive after lunch. Partly to get away from the traffic and partly to have a break, we stopped and got new tires. We had originally planned to get them in Chicago, but the bad weather made us realize we really shouldn't wait. Unfortunately, that meant we didn't get to Margaret's until 5. The nice surprise was that Kevin was also there as he had flown in to go to Cornell and to visit a few of his eastern friends. What strange timing! Margaret's studio was very cozy for all of us, but it was great being together and Margaret fixed a delicious chicken dinner using the barbecue sauce we bought at the Budweiser brewery.
ST MICHAEL'S, MD-April 27 Our winemaker dinner last night at the Shore Restaurant in the Harbor Inn attracted a nice crowd, 70 people total, many of them telling us they had enjoyed our wines during the day at the St. Michael's festival. Needless to say, the courses were all wonderful...what a treat. I think we have won over a lot of wine drinkers to our wines over the last few days.
We did see something unusual at the dinner. At one of the tables, a diner brought his own wines to have with the meal. During all the years we have been doing wine dinners, this is the first time we've ever encountered that. He is apparently known for doing this, so we were warned about it before hand.
Yesterday, it was very warm and humid so it was something of a shock to wake up to cold, windy weather this morning. I guess the bad weather finally caught up to us. I had to dig down in my luggage for my "Chicago weather" clothes. We were never warm the entire day. It didn't stop people from coming to the event, however. The pace of the day was a little slower today so I was able to sit in on a few of the chef demonstrations. I do have to admit that we were all glad to see the end of the final day of the festival....five hour tastings can be very long. But the event was definitely worth it as we sold out of almost all of our wines that were available in the festival store run by Town and Country Liquors here.
