Gary on March 31st, 2008

…why Landmark Harbor East is the nicest theater I’ve ever been in.
5) The seats and armrests are very comfortable.  Big, leather(ish), rockable.
4) The theater we were in isn’t huge.  It’s wide, but only about ten rows deep.  That lessens the chance that your seated in front of people who talk through the whole movie…
3) Nobody [...]

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Finally got the chance to get over to Harbor East and visit Bin 604. Bin 604 was managed and owned for several years by Wine Advocate reviewer Dr. Jay Miller (has has since ended his relationship with the shop). Still, the influence is there, with the only shelf talker scores coming from the [...]

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Gary on March 24th, 2008

New winery opening up in May out in Fauquier County called Barrel Oak Winery. The name is a bit strange, given that “Barrel” and “Oak” are both are used in winemaking sometimes, but not all the time. “Oak” has even become a dirty word in some circles.
No steel fermented Chardonnays, perhaps?
No matter, proprietors [...]

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Gary on March 22nd, 2008

This just in from the old news department: Last month the Virginia State Assembly voted 89-10 to legalize the serving of Sangria, reversing a prohibition-era law that prohibits mixing wine and spirits.
Who were the 10 that voted against it, and what were they thinking?
Link to snippet story.

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You may have already noticed a link at the top of this page for my winery map, and now it is time to make a formal grand opening:
Map.vinotrip.com!
It’s a winery map using Google Maps written in Ruby on Rails. Just bare bones functionality right now: search by region, search by day that the winery [...]

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Gary on March 19th, 2008

Following up on the custome cellar post from a few weeks back, there’s a thread ongoing on the Squires Board where people are posting pictures their own cellars.  Nice Stuff.
Link

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The people who create AVAs (American Viticultural Area) have ended the hiatus on AVA creation and anointed the Lehigh Valley AVA right up the road in Pennsylvania. Wines and Vines has a report on it, in which I found this blurb:
The Lehigh Valley proposal went through without a single public comment prior to the [...]

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Dropped into Charlotte’s in Federal Hill on Wednesday night to see a friend of a friend play some tunes. Turns out that, despite all appearances to the contrary, Charlotte’s runs wine tastings every Wednesday starting around 7pm. You get 5 wines for $5.25, each selected around a certain theme for the flight. [...]

Continue reading about Enough About Wine Shipping, Let’s get to Wine TASTING, Hon

Gary on March 14th, 2008

Best comment this week (okay fine, the only comment this week) goes to Marc, who posted this in the comments of an earlier post. It is a response to his query on why HB-1260 did not pass.
Thank you for your correspondence. Let me explain why House Bill 1260 has failed to pass.
First, the Baltimore [...]

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Gary on March 12th, 2008

When working in San Francisco I worked in the same building as Crushpad, a custom winemaking facility. This place was the real deal, allowing amateur winemakers to get as involved in the winemaking process as they wanted. Several commercial labels have been launched out of Crushpad and business is still booming. Last I [...]

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