Tripp Fenderson

Cruvee, the new wine social networking and personalized wine information site (or “yet another wine social networking and personalized wine information site” depending on your level of social networking fatigue), is now online.

We hit Cupertino’s this morning, grabbing a bagel and coffee before heading to Whole Foods to gawk at the Richmonders gawking at the food.

We do love our grocery stores around here, don’t we?

I thought it wouldn’t be that busy, what with Hanna making her way through town. I couldn’t have been more wrong (I should have checked out the former cube monkey’s blog first). The place was absolutely PACKED—every aisle, every section of the store. There were even 5 or 6 people doing tastings at the wine bar! A little rain won’t keep a Richmonder from checking out the new grocery store in town.

Apparently, the Finger Lakes are closer to Virginia than they appear.

I stopped by a local wine retailer tonight on my way to pick up some Thai food for my girls. My plan was to find a nice, dry Riesling from Virginia that would compliment dinner and make me forget about my raging head cold.

I made my way to the Virginia wine section, at which point the cold meds must have kicked and I stopped paying attention. Although I thought I was in the Virginia section, I managed to bring home something from the Finger Lakes region in New York—a 2006 Brickstone Cellars Dry Riesling from Widmer.

Talk about a nice surprise. Crisp, dry, well balanced, and a great finish—all for $10.99.

If you’re looking for something to compliment your next Thai or Chinese meal, I can definitely recommend this wine.

That said, can someone recommend a Virginia Riesling?

I first learned about the Turducken from Jim at MaxPitch Media and this fantastic holiday beast feast has since become a steady source of conversation in our household (don’t ask why, we’re weird that way).

Today, I stumbled across the Turducken to end all Turduckens.

Ladies and gents, may I present the Turgoobarfowlmalpousquapartsquapheachucken.

This roast of 48 birds of 12 different species costs £665, serves 125 people, and is the creation of Anne Petch, a farmer from Devon.

Anne, who runs the Heal Farm shop near Kings Nympton, said: “The True Love Roast has a bird for each of the 12 days of Christmas.

“It uses skinless breast meat from several birds of each species with flavours that work well together.”

The roast contains turkey, goose, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon squab, Aylesbury duck, Barbary duck, poussin, guinea fowl, mallard-and quail with herb and fruit stuffings.

Anne added: “It takes about 45 minutes to build the roast. However, it takes at least three hours before that to bone the birds and another couple of days to make all the stuffings.

There’s great comments on the article over at the dailymail.co.uk site too. Go read them.

[source: dailymail.co.uk]

I love bacon.

At work, my friends and I talk about bacon - a lot. Sometimes, we get into heated discussions about whether hickory or applewood smoked bacon is better (duh - hickory!). Heck, I even own 2 bacon related domain names - curedbelly.com and streakyrasher.com.

I also have Google Alerts about bacon coming into my RSS reader so I can stay on top of any breaking bacon news, which is where I stumbled across this amazing story on boston.com about Club Bacon. [omg. can you imagine?!]

The photo below accompanied the story.

The photo credit says that the person in the photo is Steve Gisselbrecht, of Allston, MA, but I know better.

That’s Ross and I want to know when he’s hosting the next bacon party...’cause I’m coming.

Take a look - side by side and tell me that’s not Ross.

I’ll let Ross and Ned’s email speak for itself.

-----

Dear Tripp,

Barrel Thief Wine Shop & Café opens Saturday!  Come in and say hello - we’d love to show you around.

Our first featured set of wine is called Starting with A… and showcases 12 great wines from countries that begin with the letter A.  Get all 12 of these wines for only $140.

And of course, since we are also a café, enjoy something off our menu prepared by our recently hired Executive Chef Joseph Costlow.  The full menu is online at http://www.barrelthiefwine.com.  (His entertaining bio is there as well.)

Hope to see you at the Thief soon….

Best regards,

Ross and Ned

Owners of Barrel Thief Wine Shop & Café

There’s a great conversation going on about Virginia wine on LENNDEVOURS.

Virginia Winery Owner Bashes Long Island Wine While Promoting His Own

Chime in.

Tom Wark brings us face to face with the wine label of the future. It isn’t pretty.

It appears there is a serious move to force nutritional labels on alcohol bottlings, including wine. It’s a Bush Administration proposal that is supported fully by The Center For Science in the Public Interest...the folks who spent time particularly in the 1990s explaining to us all why we will all die very quickly if we eat Movie Theater Popcorn, Alfredo Sauce, and any other food that is not made of pure fiber.

Read Tom’s full post and then go complain to your Senator about how ridiculous this is.

Gary is my wine hero.

I missed seeing him on Conan the other night. Thank goodness for YouTube.

I broke open the bags of Wicked Good Charcoal a little while ago to compare it to Cowboy’s charcoal.

There’s really no comparison.

The Wicked Good contains thick lumps of hardwood goodness. This stuff is heavy and made from dense blocks of hardwood. By comprison, the Cowboy Charcoal seems thin and light. While some hardwood may exist in Cowboy, it’s pretty clear that most of it is lumber.

You can see more photos here:

Wicked Good’s lumps
Cowboy’s lumps
55 lbs of Grilling Fun

Just a reminder that tomorrow is the 34th installment of Wine Blogging Wednesday.

Participating is as simple as picking up a bottle on the way home tonight, drinking it (preferably with friends) and sharing your notes with the world.

Brandon laments that more people don’t enjoy the company of the lowly turnip.

I have to admit, I’m not a fan (more out of laziness than disdain) but I do have a fond memory from my childhood of my grandfather cutting slices of raw turnips to eat while we walked the rows of his fields.

The problem, as I see it, is that turnips aren’t sexy veggies - like asparagus or beets.

Yes, beets.

We’ve grown the most wonderful beets for the last 2 seasons in our garden.

On the outside, they look like your standard red beet. Nothing special.

The fun begins when you cut them open and toss them in the pan for a quick sauté with garlic and olive oil.

Easy to grow, tasty and fun to look at.