Dear Feastlings,
I’m all for it, for those who observe it. For myself, as someone in the restaurant business for nearly forty years now, however, I’ve never felt an obligation to observe what everyone else observes. I don’t observe most holidays on the day they actually occur, and I invariably find myself feeling resentful when, suddenly, my Monday off is horned in on by tens of thousands of interlopers, dilettantes in the Monday Off lifestyle, who aren’t even really celebrating Martin Luther King’s legacy, or recognizing our veterans with anything other than a barbecue.
So it’s no surprise to me that I ignore the phenomenon called Dry January. In an industry notorious for its consumption of alcohol, I get that it appears like a copout not to abstain for a month like so many others, but quite frankly, as we close in on the two-year mark of the pandemic watching another variant carve a deeper chunk than ever out of people’s livelihood as it works its way across the nation, I have no interest in refusing a drink. My solution, personally, is to drink better wine than I was drinking before. Or spirits. Or whatever.
I know alcohol isn’t the solution for everyone- probably for anyone- but after two years of feeling hobbled by a dining room I can’t fill up, a staff who’s working more than they want to because there’s no one else to do it, and an ever-shrinking safety net of savings, I have no intention of renouncing something that brings me pleasure right now. Plus, it’s our bread and butter; one of the few ways we’ve been able to hang on throughout this crushing financial blow is to keep selling wine and spirits to those of you who’ll join me in forgetting momentarily how overwhelming it all is by tasting something joyous.
In that spirit, I remind you all that there’s a wine tasting today, one whose in-person guest count has dropped by about 30% since the beginning of the week and whose remote population hasn’t increased by that number.
So here’s a word of encouragement. It’s a good day to taste some wine. You can swing by and pick up samples and join us on Zoom at 2:00. Does 2:00 not work for you? Log in, aske me for permission to record it, and watch it at your leisure. Here’s how to log in:
Doug Levy is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: New year, new wines
Time: Jan 8, 2022 02:00 PM Arizona
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88091348340?pwd=WEdJRmlCb3FWaFowdW1WSFA3dk5Kdz09
Meeting ID: 880 9134 8340
Passcode: 430758
Meanwhile, you’re welcome to join us here at Feast, or pick up some takeout, or just pick up that bottle of something special that boosts your mood and makes you think of better times, both past and future. And for any of it, we thank you.
Your buddy,
Doug