Fitness Break: Wine Tasting in Boston

Vanilla posted today about a new recovery drink, which he nicknamed “Cabern-ade Sauvignon.” This sounds like a brilliant idea to me. After all, we learned a few months ago that beer helps you recover faster than just drinking water, so why not wine?

Okay, now that the obligatory “connection to fitness” is out of the way, I can post what I really wanted to write about: a story about this fantastic wine store I visited in Boston yesterday. While lying around on the couch watching movies (we saw 5 in two days… impressive, huh? Actually just really, really lazy) and trying to decide what to do, Adam suggested we visit his favorite wine store, The Wine Gallery.

It’s actually not in Boston; it’s in Brookline, which is a suburb of Boston, but it was a five minute drive from Adam’s apartment. He lives in The Fenway… not in the stadium, but close enough to see it. And close enough so that last time I visited and Adam had a rooftop party on the night of a game, I could threaten to yell “Red Sox suck! Go Yankees!” after the game and make Adam really concerned, because there were several thousand people passing by his building, and he thought they might break in and kill me. But I digress.

So what makes The Wine Gallery so special? In addition to being an absolutely gorgeous, spacious, airy store filled with tons of different wines, they do free tastings all day every day – no trying to go on the right day at the right time, and no need to worry about whether the bottles will be done before you get there. They have this nifty technology that is fancy enough to get written up in The Boston Globe (I know it’s not a real paper like the New York Times, but it’s still kind of impressive. Sorry, had to get my “NYC is better than Boston” digs in there, as I was surrounded by Bostonians putting down my city all weekend). It’s called “the wine jukebox.” Basically, you give the guy at the front desk your driver’s license, and in exchange, he gives you this little credit card thingy. You go to the back of the store and there are three round and one square serving station, each with about 10 bottles of wine in various half-full and half-empty states. So why doesn’t this wine go bad? Because every time the little spigot takes some wine out, it also injects a bit of nitrogen back into the bottle to keep it fresh. Awesome!

Anyway, you put your little card in the slot on one of the carousels, and then you take your glass and put it under the wine you want to taste. Press the button, and your card is automatically debited two credits per 2 oz. You get 12 credits, so that’s six wines per tasting. (The article says they do it based on price, but that policy has changed so now it’s just any six wines). You can have six different ones, as we did, or go back and forth between two (especially if you’re trying to choose the perfect wine and just can’t decide). I suppose you could also just get six servings of one wine, but I don’t know why you would do that when there are so many delicious wines out there. I had a really hard time deciding even when I had six!

I stuck to whites, while Adam checked out the reds, but we each shared our favorite, and I ended up buying the Merlot that Adam offered (Christian Mourix, Bordeaux, 2005). I also bought a Spanish wine (Verdejo Zapadorado, Rueda, 2006) that was pretty fruity and delicious. Unfortunately, I skipped the amazing chardonnay I found (Constantia Uitsig Chardonnay Reserve 2003) because it was a bit pricey for me at $26/bottle. It was honestly one of the most unique wines I’ve ever tasted – it was very spicy, and almost tasted more like a gewurztraminer than a chard. They had the 2004 as well, at $19/bottle (which I would have gotten), but it just wasn’t as good – it was more your run-of-the-mill chard. Anyway, I kind of regret not getting it now, but maybe I’ll look for it in a NYC store.

Tomorrow I’ll get back to our regularly scheduled fitness programming, but I thought a drinking break would only be appropriate given the name of this blog 🙂 And if you’re in the Boston area, definitely hit up The Wine Gallery – it’s pretty awesome!