At 132 Front Street, Greenport, NY 11944, Greenport Wines and Spirits is the most complete and knowledgeable source for fine wines for every budget. Mon-Thurs 10am-7pm, Fri-Sat 10am-8pm, Sun Noon-6pm.
Open later during the holidays.
Phone 631.477.6701 We deliver.
Living near the sea and at the mercy of it, we watched a lot of the Weather Channel over the past days and screens filled with cones and arrows, time lines and accuracy. We dodged the arrow so to speak (William Tell and shooting the apple springs to mind) and now look on in horror at those who weren't so lucky.
Water came up to our door, or so the line of washed up leaves told us, so we were far more fortunate than our neighbors down the street and around the corner. In fact our end of the island faired a lot better than we expected or deserved as all of us were in something of the same boat until the left turn arrow sprung up and the balance of effects became uneven.
We opened on Monday, wood came off the windows and our friends showed up to say hello. All had stories to tell, mostly good for "Halloween scared stuff". We will have one here in our village as we were spared somewhat but LIPA is out of power and trick or a treat will have a limited geographic area for the ghosts and goblins.
Our Gate Night prankster missed our town and for that we are thankful. One arrow that missed its mark.
Getting ready for Halloween, we figured it would be good to have a couple good chocolate quotes to toss around. If you have a good one, drop on in and tell us about it at our spirits/candy tasting today.
Favorite Chocolate Quotes #1
Life is like a box of chocolates. you never know what you're gonna get.
Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks)
Favorite Chocolate Quotes #2
There are four basic food groups: milk chocolate, dark and white chocolate, and chocolate truffles.
Anonymous
Favorite Chocolate Quotes #3
Make a list of important things to do today. At the top of your list, put 'eat chocolate.' Now, you'll get at least one thing done today.
We believe this is from Gina Hayes
Favorite Chocolate Quotes #4
I never met a chocolate I didn't like.
Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) in Star Trek: The Next Generation
Favorite Chocolate Quotes #6
And above all... Think Chocolate!
'Betty Crocker'
Favorite Chocolate Quotes #7
The 12-step chocoholics program: NEVER BE MORE THAN 12 STEPS AWAY FROM CHOCOLATE!
Terry Moore
Favorite Chocolate Quotes #8
All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt!
Lucy Van Pelt in Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz
Favorite Chocolate Quotes #9
Chemically speaking, chocolate really is the world's perfect food.
Michael Levine, nutrition researcher, as quoted in The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars
Favorite Chocolate Quotes #10
I have this theory that chocolate slows down the aging process.... It may not be true, but do I dare take the chance?
We are watching the approach/forecasts of this big storm headed our way that is pretty much on course to blow the lids off the pumpkins. Seems the Halloween, the trick for a treat part, will have to come a few days early.
We have our tasting as usual this Saturday from 3-6p and it is free. We figured, and rightly so, that the distribution of candy might be a bit uneven this year just because that Halloween fell early in the week. Now with the interloping of this big storm, plans should be made now for any number of good reasons. Candy always falls in the "its a good thing" so behave accordingly.
There is a bit of misunderstanding about Saints and Souls Day and the "Eve" where the townsfolk parade around in costumes and why. As these days are actually religious days (Eve, Saints and Souls) to get into the theology of it all is best left to other forums. Just pick out what you like and celebrate it is quite enough for us. However, to get this big deal few sequence in order, the days are:
Our Tasting on Saturday the 27th
Buying Candy, stocking up, and buying batteries on the 28th
Gate Night on the 29th
All Hallows Eve on the 30th
All Saints Day on the 1st
All Souls Day on the 2nd
Quite a celebration weekend. Be safe. stock up. More later.
Ignus fatuus is a Jack-o-Lantern. The inhabitants of the Isles were keen on carving up gourds and poking light holes in the outer skin as kind of scary things to put out in the moors. Seems like a waste of candles and food but nowadays it is replaced by the one on the front porch to let the trick for a treaters know someone is home with candy.
We are pairing spirits of the liquid kind up with all those Snickerbars and this-and-thats, so drop in Saturday between 3-6p and give us a boo!
Saturday is a day when most of the elementary schools let the kids dress up and go to a town parade. It is actually very nice to see and to let kids enjoy the tradition; and it is a tradition and not the work of the devil. You should know that. No one is very sure how far back the idea of carving pumpkins goes but the jack-o-lantern - you remember? Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jumps over the candle stick? - certainly has some American roots - there is a poem called "The Pumpkin" by Whittier in 1850:
Oh!—fruit loved of boyhood!—the old days recalling,
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling! When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
All of which (witch) is more than you want to know. Have a happy Halloween. Keep the cats indoors.
That fall day of days is looming. It wasn't invented by the candy makers but they sure have a time of it and why not? You will be giving their products to cute little kids in costumes, knocking on doorswith big smiles and parents gleeming in the background. And just think, at the end of the evening, you will time it so the last handfull of candy fills the bag of the last goblin. Ha!! The double whammy is that if you have kids, all that candy you sent out the door will find its way back.
Actually there is a fairly good chance you can take a few of those Snickers and candy corn pieces and have a little fun with them, or at least soften the waistline blow and angst with a good pairing of wines or spirits.
That is the subject of our tasting Saturday so we are going to write every day about this, and perhaps inspire you instead of depress you. This, until the end of the year, is sugar season when chocolate stuff drops like snowflakes so we might as well get used to it, get over it, and be resourceful.
Three months ago there was epic heat. Six months ago spring came 2 months early. Now we are headlong into leaves and fall rains. Strike that. More than ample rain and leaves.
Have you noticed that winter doesn't really smell like anything and that fall smells so much? Such a difference between now and and those early days of the year- or early spring for that matter. We are right on the water - ocean - bay and there was the clear hint of the summer's water going back to winter clear the other day...we could smell the salt....bits, whisps of scents... and in the evening....night perhaps....perfumes...
Sometimes we envy our pets their sense of smell. The "madelines and tea" of Proust, the kitchen on Thanksgiving morning, the woods after a rain - so many things that are big and obvious but our pets; well they smell in nuance and remember in detail. Wish we were that lucky and that sharp.
Exquisite. Beyond the capacity of mere mortals. When you can create this, dance this, understand this...
This has to set you into some sort of orbit of inconsequentially. The gift of grace, dance, music, composition...it comes around once in a lifetime sometimes the beauty of it..well..knock yourself out.
It almost compares to tonight's sunset. Feels so good on the skin and the mind.
A couple days ago we celebrated Columbus Day and we, thereafter made some comments that Christofore was ripe for Sainthood and aside from mustering the courage to make a five week sail across the Atlantic before the trade winds shifter back to westerlies, he didn't do Spain a lot of PR good. That he wasn't Spanish is well known and that is why Columbus Day appears to be more of an Italian remembrance than a Spanish hoopla.
So now we have a decided choice to make as to how we remember Columbus Day. We can celebrate the permanent Euro-settling of the Americas and thank him for that; getting the ball rolling so to speak, or we can talk about how the Spanish weren't really good guests and created a lot of mischief during the early years. The Italians caused none of this and unfortunately got caught up in the painting with the Spanish brush as the saying goes. Chiedo scusa.
We do note, however, that Rush Limbaugh had a great deal to say about those who note that from the Native American point of view, having these three ships appear over the horizon was not a great thing for them and because the White House put up a proclamation that noted that they might have had some displeasure, all lefties were some sort of bad name word in destroying our history as only Rush seems to know it.
That is by the by and let's move on. Halloween is next on the agenda and we are trying to figure out a way to be PC to goblins and ghosts - or is that ghosts and goblins....
See how hard it is to write a blog? Let's all dance and sing.
Yesterday was Columbus Day in honor of one of the guys who popped in from a journey across the pond. He stopped in the Canary Islands and from there made the 5 week voyage to the New World. That was, to us, the most interesting "fact revisited" as, we are sure, you like us were indoctrinated in the long, arduous journey with the crew near mutiny from fear and boredom. We are pretty sure that crossing the ocean at that time was no piece of cake but it also wasn't a journey to the moon.
That brings us to the point. We are taught or learn certain things in school, at the dinner table, or perhaps by some just repeating a supposed fact over and over until it becomes the stuff of legends.
A legend isn't necessarily true. It is just that; a legend, and legendary doesn't mean true stories but some legendary recount as in Paul Bunyan the legendary axeman.
Columbus was by all accounts a pretty nifty navigator (although there is some talk that he had a map of sorts) and his motivations probably started and ended with greed and power. He was a rotten administrator, infinitely cruel, and essentially ran the holdings into the ground. Fact is, Leif Erickson's 11th explorations beat him by 400+ years and we don't have a Nordic Day or a Leaf Day unless we re-invent Arbor Day ( bad joke).
This doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate the day like we did yesterday. On the contrary. It might also be more romantic and inspiring to think of the voyage as a hardship from which sprung a nation forged on the anvil of travail. That appears not to be the case. The only sure facts we know is that Columbus showed up here 4 times in 12 years, didn't do anyone any real good, and now a bunch of folks walk up 5th Avenue in his honor.
One thinks of the darnedest things when you wake up too early to get up. Your mind wants to zip into the day ahead but there are so many more pleasant things to dwell on.
We mentioned this to one of our customers who dropped in just to say hello after his daily trip to the post office across the street. We said that he was looking in good health and all that courtesy greeting stuff and he replied "I wish" and that got us talking. He finally came up with the idea that what Greenport could use was a wishing well, like the one in Chinatown in Los Angeles or the ones that sit out in front of countless restaurants gathering pennies.
We thought about it some and talked about it for the rest of the day, off and on. I mean, Greenport is "on the water" and wishing wells came about because people thought water was "sacred" in some way - it is absolutely necessary for life and all that. Besides it would collect pennies like crazy.
A little reading on the subject gave us the information that it wasn't just a matter of tossing a coin in the fountain (substitute for a well if you don't have one of those handy), but it was "how it landed" that decided if you get your wish. Seriously. Only the spirit in the well or water or fountain knew what was the proper landing and if you notice songs like "Three coins in a fountain" popular decades ago, it is tossing in coins in lots of three that gives you the best chance - three for religious reasons and in math probability it is almost completely unlikely that all three of anything will land "same side up" so you were "covered" in a matter of speaking.
Kids love wishing wells and want to toss money in before they knew or know what the deal is or was and what adult hasn't thought "I wish I...." and followed that with so many "primal car scream" remembrances that we might as well chuck a big solid gold bar in the water and leave it at that; part offering and part hope.
Well (pun), back to sleep. Wish I could get a full night straight. I'm going to talk to the mayor about a well though. It would be a gold mine.
