Weekly Set Back

It seems every week starts the same: Monday the fires are set ablaze, Tuesday thru Friday are spent putting out the fires. I don't spend a lot of time getting into the details of what we deal with during our day-to-day as I want to keep these reports upbeat and positive, but suffice to say if I had tear ducts and a shoulder I'd be using them both. However, Cyrick and I have developed some really thick skin in the past two years and few things phase us to the point of paralysis, subsequent breakdown and then total meltdown. It's like the part in Forest Gump where Captain Dan is in the crows nest of the shrimping boat during the hurricane, yelling and chiding the gods to bring their worst. At the end of a week we typically look at each each and say, "It's going to take a God-given miracle for this place to open". And I don't say that in jest, either.

So our week started with the SF Planning department denying our health permit application on the grounds that our current use allowance is not permitted without a 30-day neighborhood notification for a change in use. Now, this isn't news to us. We spent what amounts to a new Ford Mustang on an architect in SF, our landlords recommendation, to figure all of this out for us some 4 months ago. Short story long, the architects strategy backfired and here we stand 30 days from opening and we can't serve food. Oh, and of course our beer and wine license is connected to all of this too so we can't even get you liquored up. So we're in triage now to get this ship back on course.

So the show goes on. We put together a new strategy to deal with the problem and it's the best we can do with the time and resources we have left.

Here are a few shots of some more wine tastings we've done this week and last.


1) David McFaden is a friend who has a keen pallet for the French grape juice. He joined Di and I at the famous Kermit Lynch wine merchant for tasting.


Shot of Daniel (our wine rep), Dave and Di at the end of the tasting. We got a few parting gifts as well, Kermit Lynch t-shirts.


Daniel was very generous at this tasting. He allowed us to roam their wine shop and select 13 bottles to taste. We had some very beautiful wines this afternoon. Thanks KL!



Jeffrey from Farm Wine Importers tasted us through a solid selection of French wines that, again, showed tremendous depth and character.


Raphael Knapp from International Vineyards was another Francophile that has a really interesting book of small French producers. Many of whom are the younger generation of French wine makers who are not doing it the way their parents and grandparents did. Makes for some interesting wine.



Richard from Vine Connections showed us all the goods coming out of Argentina. After tasting mainly French juice during the day this was a great change of pace. Completely different styles as you can imagine.