Good Morning Gentle Readers,
On the morning of the 4th of July, a coupla decades ago, TWC was wandering the teeming, sweltering streets of DC near the mall when a frenzied black guy materialized out of the crowd and shoved a small paper plate toward my face.
Nof Karoh-linah Chop Bah Buh Cue!
That's the best I could do as his drawal was nigh on unintelligible. All y'all Southerners feel free to correct my phonetic pronounciation.
The sample of North Carolina Chop(ped) BBQ was succulent, spicy, smokey, sweet. A culinary delight. It was my first time and I happily followed him back to his smoke wagon for a plate full with fixin's. Thought I'd died and gone to heaven and in that epiphany, I realized that whatever we Californios had assumed to be BBQ, wasn't quite.
Tasting a wine before buying seems as ordinary as tasting North Carolina Chop(ped) BBQ before buying a plate full. And, in fact, it is the sample, the taste, that sold moi. It is why Costco stages lunch ladies in hairnets hawking samples of everything from designer coffee to thin slices of Cheescake Factory yummies at strategic points across the store.
Yet, in the Land of the Free, wine tasting, which is a simple interaction between a merchant and a customer, must be legalized by a state legislature. Not knocking it, anything that enhances consumer choice is a step forward. But still.
Whole story here.
As Always,
TWC
Photo Credit (unless otherwise noted): ©TWC, all rights reserved
