Pimp My Wine
If you are anywhere and not subscribed to the First Vine e-mail list, you're missing out on one of the best information-mooching opportunities out there.

If you're in the DC/Virginia area and don't know about First Vine, then you're REALLY missing out so get your browser over there and sign up.

And if you don't read past here, at the least check out the website and join their mailing list:
firstvine.com/ . What you get in exchange for your e-mail address (cheap!) is a weekly newsletter that's not just fun to read, but also full of information about wine, plus a recipe for something that's delicious when paired with wine.

I met Tom, one of the owners of First Vine, a couple of months ago. When you get around to the "so what do you do" with someone and they say "wine importer" it can be a little intimidating, particularly at a dinner party where you've brought some wine, and he's brought some wine, too. But he's not just gracious with dummies like me: he's really working hard to find hidden treasures in European wineries and bring them to the US.

This is story food done right. I've ranted a lot (not on the blog - thank me someday) about marketing-driven story food (Whole Foods, Trader Joe's to lesser degree, every "fine food shoppe" inside a department store) that is long on mythology and BS, and short on (devoid of) content. What we have here is quite the opposite.

Bullet points:

- First Vine is finding high-value stuff, and "editing" so customers don't have to. It's hard work but they pull it off. Tom told me about one vineyard that doesn't have "the best grapes" but produces "the best wine" because the winemaker knows what she's doing and works it like a pro. I like stories like that.
- It's all really very well priced, high value wine.. about what you'd pay at Trader Joe's for one of their "better" wines, but this stuff is hand-picked, not coming out of the same stainless steel vat in an industrial park in Anaheim.
- pairings, pairings, pairings - the First Vine website is structured for exploration and learning, and every wine has generous notes. There are lots of ways to explore the inventory.
- If you actually /want/ some wine, First Vine delivers, but to DC and Virginia only. If you're there, you're lucky to have this resource. If you're there and liked this post, send me a bottle of Domaine Fond Croze Cuvée Romanaise in gratitude, and be sure to get one for yourself.
- The recipes in the newsletter are worth the price alone... seasonal recipes (farm market figs this week), timely, not overly fussy but not simplistic and obvious either.

I like what they're doing as a store, and I like what they're doing with their online presence too. At a time when online banking works like garbage (and is insecure - check out my papers about Bank of America), and online services go off and on, when the local grocery can barely make its coupons available on a web page and Dell tech support keeps telling people to "reboot and reinstall" it is just satisfying, and a relief, to find a sincere resource, created and maintained by people who do know what they are talking about (real substance - not some "web 3.0" poseurs), that assumes the audience has an average IQ of at least 101, and that proceeds from those premises but doesn't take itself too seriously.

Maybe wine can be fun and affordable again in a big way... and not in the highly-polished, commercial, franchised "Best Cellars" way, but on a human scale. If so, then I'd say First Vine had something to do with it, at least for their customers in Virginia and CD.

Thanks guys, from a faithful subscriber/information moocher and eventual customer. This is almost enough reason to move to DC.
 
- jim