The first wine bar to exclusively feature wine from Pennsylvania is about to open in a few days. This is a significant moment for local viticulture: PA wineries have never been accorded this level of economic support and visibility in a major city. It would not be overstating that this is a historic first in the history of our local wine industry that has been met with a limp silence from the media.

Why the silence? Because it’s common knowledge that Pennsylvania wines suck. They are sweet or taste awful. Or both. Local wineries are held to ridicule, and no one with aspirations of refinement and culture would ever speak well of a local winery. How do we know this? Because everyone says so!

So, Terry McNally opens the Paris Wine Bar (2303 Fairmount Avenue) without much fanfare. McNally is the owner of London Grill next door to the wine bar. She is one of the first in Philadelphia to embrace the “Farm to Table” ethos, long before it was trendy.

The idea that Pennsylvania cannot produce good wine is bullshit, to be frank. The region has similar weather patterns (Köppen climate classification Cfa) as the Piedmonte in Italy. That, along with the long band of limestone soil that runs through the Brandywine valley, you have the foundation of high-quality viticulture. Add to that a decent amount of air flow, a few hills of degraded friable schist, or even a sandy valley, and you have the makings of top-shelf wines. Just make sure the vines have southwestern exposure, and that’s terroir in a nutshell.

What’s keeping local winemaker’s back? It’s all about the cheddar, baby. Unlike other east coast wine regions like Virginia, the state doesn’t invest much in the state’s wineries. Tellingly, Pennsylvania offers a wealthy of grant opportunities to farms, except for one’s growing wine grapes. This keeps funding for research and development of the PA wine industry continuing at a snails pace.

The other reason is you. And by “you” I mean in aggregate, the millions of wine buyers in the region. You buy Chardonnay and Merlot and rarely anything else. If you do buy a local wine, it is going to be a sweet one. For a local winemaker, this sucks. The grapes that work well here are not the ones people will buy.

There is a legend in the local wine trade about a hotshot young winemaker who came here from California and crafted what was probably the best wine ever to be made in Pennsylvania. Every sommelier and winemaker who tasted it agreed it was going to change the face of winemaking in the state. It was amazing. It was shipped to the wine stores, but no one would try it. Very few people were willing to give a Cabernet Franc from Pennsylvania a chance. Only a few hundred cases were sold. It was a total failure, and the end of the poor bastard’s career.

SO, until the cheddar start to flow, the PA wine industry will continue to tread water. Until then, amazing wines made from grapes like Bonarda, Barbera, Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc will remain theoretical. That is why a wine bar in Philadelphia means so much, it may mean the beginning of a new era for local winemakers.

And it should mean a great deal for you, too. A recent report from Virginia showed that the local wine industry added $747 Million to the state’s economy every year. Most of that from a grape that few people have heard of: viognier.

Drinking local brings in the cheddar, baby.

Drink the Cheddar

After having some success with their Twitter hashtag campaign #MeetTheFarmers (which promoted the supposedly good ingredients that McDonald’s uses and the farmers that produce them), the wise social media sages at Mickey D’s thought it would be a bright idea to introduce a new hashtag, #McDStories, so Tweeters could tell their stories about how much they love McDonald’s!

As someone who has actually used Twitter (unlike, apparently,  McDonald’s social media director, Rick Wion), on the other hand, a tweet such as “ate a big mac, sick all afternoon #McDStories” popped into my head almost immediately, without even taking the time to be clever.

How about “My 4 year old weighs 100lbs” or “”Watching a classmate projectile vomit his food all over the restaurant during a 6th grade trip,” or “Fingernail in my BigMac.” (Ok, I made up that first one, but the other two are actual tweets in response to this campaign.)

Though McDonald’s is claiming that only 2% of the tweet responses were negative, they also said that they knew of their mistake within the first hour of the campaign and are no longer promoting it. Twitter users, of course, have moved on to #McFail to keep things going.

#McFail

I am going out onto a limb and be the first one to say it in print: FooBooz is dead and gone. It’s not a long limb to climb out on, though. Yesterday’s unveiling –after months of  speculation– of the Philadelphia edition of Eater pretty much puts the nails in the coffin. This after a year of Philly-style hate built up against FB and its  fryboy editor Jason Sheehan.

Everything went wrong Philly Mag bought FooBooz from Art Echells.  His laizze faire  attitude, gigantic readership, and insider track with all the major PR firms in the city meant that it was the place to get the buzz about Philly food and booze scene.  There was plenty of criticism that he was a flunky for the 1%ers in the city, but in the end everyone loved Art. After all,  he was just a regular Philly guy who loves hockey and  managed to be at the right place at the right time.

Philly Mag, on the other hand, is just another big-money institution. Rather than hiring local talent to run the blog, they hired an outsider from Seattle. From the very beginning he was doomed.  In one of his first pieces, he called Moma’s  ”a sad looking vegetarian restaurant doing no trade” and then turned around and praised Village Whiskey to high heaven.  It’s well known that  both restaurants are top of their game (burger and falafel, respectively).  Many folks found it was interesting that he only praised the one with a high-powered PR firm.

Jason may be a great guy, but his writing  seems to be out of step with Philly. His writing often comes off a touch too belligerent  and condescending. Compare that to the new editor of Eater, Collin Flatt. A longtime favorite who has run Phoodie and NBC’s TheFeast Philadelphia, Collin  is a smartass local boy who has more connections than a heroin addict.  With Eater’s credo of take-no-bullshit and Collin’s insider knowledge of the scene in Philly, it’s only a matter of time before FooBooz is turned into a giant billboard for Cook. Wait, it already is.

Fee Fi FooBooz

If a bunch of chain bar/grill-type places switch places in the ‘burbs, will anyone notice?

This question is about to be answered, with Landmark Americana (locations in Philly, Glassboro, and West Chester) moving into the recently vacated Paddock at Devon space (which wasn’t a chain, but might as well have been), JD McGillicuddy’s (several Philly and DelCo locations) replacing the Boathouse on N. Wayne Ave. in Wayne, and PJ Whelihan’s (13 locations in PA and South Jersey) replacing Bull Durham’s (which recently replaced Bennigan’s) in West Chester. In fairness to Bull Durham’s, they were an independent business, but it seems they were aiming at the crowd that might instead go to Lone Star or Famous Dave’s, which clearly wasn’t working for them.

In the end, does it matter what any of these places are called? If you want an order of frozen chicken wings and whatever light beer is on special, any of them will do. The important question, really, is whether the Paddock’s happening cougar scene will transition to Landmark, or venture elsewhere. (Things just haven’t been the same since The Wooden Iron closed.)

Chain Bang

A few years ago, it would have seemed preposterous to pair high-end, big money Main Line Hotel dining with craft beer from a place like Brooklyn. (One typically showers before donning pink pants and sockless loafers). As such, it’s illustrative of how much respect craft beer has gained in this area that Paramour, the multi-million dollar, recently-opened restaurant in the Wayne Hotel, is hosting a Farmer Brewer’s dinner with Sixpoint Ales of Brooklyn. (January 24^th, 6:30pm, $65)

At $65, this is certainly still aimed at the elite Main Liner; one could surely pick up a 4-pack of tallboys (Sixpoint’s vessel of choice) of each of the 7 featured beers (though there are a few rarities) for less than the cost for two diners. But there’s surely the food to consider as well.

The menu is beef-themed, featuring 5 courses of all-natural and locally grown Scottish Highland beef from Why Not Farm in Glenmoore, PA (as well as a salad and dessert course). 5 courses of beef! I enjoy me some beef as much as the next guy, but 5 courses of beef and 7 varieties of beer is a surefire gastro-intestinal disaster. Then again, I’m sure some of you will get all frothy about the idea of Philly Cheese Steak Sliders on Brioche (paired with Sixpoint Warrior IPA).

Local Ox and the Sixpoint

Who would have thunk it? Yuengling is now both the largest and oldest American brewery.  Does this make the Mid Atlantic  region the suds capitol of the USA? Do we get fancy capes and crowns? Tiaras? Not yet,  probably (hopefully) no.

What it does mean is that Yuengling  beat out the Boston Beer Company for the top spot. I think we are all surprised to hear that the top spot was between  our beloved lager and Sam Adams. What the hell happened to Budweiser and Coors? Did all the rednecks suddenly disappear, ala Alcatraz?  Sadly, no. It’s just because all the big boys (MillerCoors and Anheuser Busch) are now multinational corporations with headquarters in Canada and Europe.

In fact, only about 7% of all beer drunk in the USA is made by an American brewery. If anything, Yuengling is the tallest of the dwarfs, owning 1.2% of the beer drinking market. Boston Beer Company has about 1.1% .  In any case, let’s put it in the win column. After all, we’ve been the unheralded birthplace of American beer for a long time now: in 1840,  the Wagner Brewery in Philly brewed the very first lager in America;  not to mention Pittsburgh Brewing developed the first pull-top can.

Old is the New Big

A small little wine school in Chicago is getting a whole lot of attention. Master Sommelier (and runner up in the International Silly Name Contest)  Krunch Kretschmar has unwittingly discovered how to build a virtual nuclear warhead with nothing but social media.

Krunch owns Bottled Grapes, a tiny wine school in Chicago. He recently opted to do a Groupon promotion.  That alone was a bit crazy, since there is a growing amount of proof that a poorly conceived Groupon promotion can bankrupt a small businesses. For his Groupon, he sold  $35 tickets for $17.50 each. Since Groupon takes 50% of the revenue of each sale, that means Krunch earned $8.75  per ticket.  At that price, he was loosing money for every groupon sold, and there was over three thousand of these deals sold. Since he only offers an average of  four classes a month, he was looking at loosing money for a few years.  That sucks, big time.

Add to the mix a Yelper. Yelp is a powerful thing. Yelp and it’s aggregated reviews are widely trusted as a barometer of quality. Large businesses will have hundreds of reviews, so a single review won’t affect them. However, a single bad review can cause major damage to business with less than ten reviews, thousands of dollars of lost sales to a small company. That is the type of power that should be handled carefully and gently. Unfortunately, the power of Yelp  is largely wielded by the most callous groups in America: affluent white twenty-somethings.

So, the Yelper in question, Cecelia Groark, bought a Groupon. She didn’t like the customer support she received, so she left a scathing Yelp review.  If facing bankruptcy via  Groupon wasn’t enough, now Krunch’s reputation was tarnished, too. Yelp plus Groupon is a volatile mix, that’s for sure: it can implode a business in a few short months.

What turned this from a sad tale to a nuclear chain reaction was Krunch himself. He figured out the identity of the Yelper, and engaged in the type of  payback every small business owner dreams of, but never does: he struck back. He created a blog under her name, and according to the Chicago Sun-Times he “accused her of ‘embezzling’ from her employer, of having a drug addiction and of “turning to the oldest profession to gain funds need[ed] to support her habits.”

Unfortunately for Krunch, he seems to be something of a dumbass. After creating the blog (which included her cell phone number), he emailed a link to Ms. Groark. Now he is facing a half million dollar lawsuit.  Oh, and dozens of other Yelpers are trashing his reputation. While Krunch “I hope to God your middle name isn’t Kris” Kretschmar is not much of a protagonist, this is one of those stories that every small business owner should take notice of.

Krunch went Yelp

Not sure how the Pennsylvania Department of Education will react to the news, but apparently you can now attend  Tequila University.

According Verdad Restaurant & Tequila Bar, they are now accepting applications for the  Tequila University 2012, winter semester. The semester starts January 19th and classes are held the 3rd Thursday of each month.  Pushing the envelope further, the restaurant is offering a Masters Degree in tequila if you attend all twelve classes.

Sounds like a good time. Good luck, Verdad,  and let’s all hope the good state of Pennslvania doesn’t take offense at your cavalier use of high learning as a prop to push booze.  After all, tequila is supposed to be a crutch for higher education, not the other way around.

Verdad Restaurant & Tequila Bar
818 W. Lancaster Avenue
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
610.520.9100
www.verdadrestaurant.com

Tequila University

Philly boy goes to wine school, moves to New Zealand, and becomes a winemaker. Great little pick-me-up story from the Burlington Country Times. Good read for all of those folks out there who want to just say “fuck it” and get out of the rat race… or step out of the unemployment line.

His own journey took him on a visit to Italy while attending Holy Cross High School, to Belgium as an exchange student at Catholic University of America, and then to the Bronx, N.Y., for a post-college stint managing a touring rock band. After considering politics and philosophy as careers, he decided the former was too dirty and the latter too impractical.

So, Brennan returned to McCrossen’s as a bartender and manager, and took some classes at the Wine School of Philadelphia. In 2008, he enrolled in the Centre of Viticulture and Wine at Eastern Institute of Technology in Hawke’s Bay and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in winemaking.

More here: Delran Native Uncorks Career Overseas

NJ to NZ

Those sweet sweet bastards at the Wine School just finished up another stellar night. I you weren’t there, you missed a great First Friday. Your loss, but at least I can give you a peak  the wine list. These are the six wines you need to buy right now. All are priced around $15, and effing delicious.

1.      Thorn-Clarke 2011 Mount Crawford Riesling, Eden Valley, (AUS)

No sweet Riesling here.  South Australia’s Eden Valley offers a style that is bone dry, steely, mineral driven with bitter lime and racy acidity.

2.      Apex Ascent 2010 Sauvignon Blanc, Columbia Valley (WAS)

A rarity, for sure.  We’re used to Bordeaux red varietals from this central Washington region, but not often do we see crisp whites such as this.  With Ripe citrus fruits and blossoms, this is a clean, lean wine that’s simply refreshing.

3.      Framingham 2008 Pinot Noir, Marlborough, (NZ)

Marlborough, on New Zealand’s South island is The Burgundy of the south.  World class pinot noir such as this can be had at a fraction of the price of it’s northerly cousin.  Kirsch cherry, cinnamon, and earth make this a nuanced beauty.

4.      Mantellassi 2009 Morellino di Scansano, Tuscany (IT)

Still the same sangiovese grape as chianti, but this coastal region to the west, called the maremma, makes for a much riper juicier wine. Expect raspberry, cherry preserves, cedar and tar.

5.      L’Ecole No. 41 2006 Merlot, Columbia Valley, (WAS)

Merlot in this rustic, powerful style is what the Columbia valley is staking its current reputation on.  Chocolate, sweet spice, chewy tannins and tobacco.

6.       Avalon 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, (CA)

Cab is king in napa and Avalon makes cabernet sauvignon its sole specialty.  Depth and concentration with blackberry, nutmeg, and a cool, earthy mineralty.  This is a leaner, subtler version of the norm with lower alcohol and a finer line of acidity to keep the wine’s composure.

Under Corked