The last sooty streaks of light have gone dark in the southwest beyond the Empire State Building. Tourists' flashbulbs still twinkle from the observation deck. For some reason this sight makes me think of "It's a Wonderful Life." Every time a tourist's flashbulb pops, a financier gets arrested. -- That's right, ZuZu.
Strappo is here. Strappo is tacit.
Strappo has been here. Strappo has muted himself to listen for further cracks and tears in the foundations and the fabric of society. It gives him a cruel satisfaction to look across to the Lipstick Building, where Bernie Madoff's office is located, and to consider that in Palm Beach and on Park Avenue there is much cracking and tearing going on. A bad thing for the Louis XVII chairs and the Fragonards, to be sure. After years of seeing Bronx families huddled together in sleep on the 6 train early each morning, I feel no twinge of fellow feeling for the victims of Madoff. Who, as the Times informed us today, is still walking around Park Avenue even if he has an ankle monitor on. He will be confined to his own home on aforesaid avenue from 7 pm to 9 am, which means only early bird specials for him. He continues to wear his shit-eating grin. I have a vague sense that his own personal fortune is quite safe somewhere far far away.
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Believe it or not, I wasn't on this green island called Earth in 1930 - 1931. I do have to wonder how it felt and tasted then, and if the feeling in the air was like today's. The sense that no one can quite believe what's happening, this slo-mo slide that seems endless. After all, it wasn't as though the Wall Street crash took place in October 1929 and the very next day we had a "third of a nation ill-clothed, ill-housed and ill-fed." It happened far more gradually than that, over 3-4 years, and in fact some people fared pretty well if they had cash; prices dropped, as they are starting to do now.
Someone commented to me today that the city seems strangely quiet and empty. Get away from the usual tourist haunts and big midtown office blocks and the crowds and traffic are light. The gloomy chill doesn't exactly entice people outside, either. This is highly unusual a week before Christmas. We're all making a virtue of necessity -- saying home to eat, passing up fantastic shopping bargains -- it's in to be frugal.
We'll know it's really bad when the rent parties start.
Photo: Buffalo 2007 -- preview of the next five years?
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As to wine, the alleged focus of this blog, I got this depressing though predictable news today from the Wine&Spirits Daily news feed.
In order to check up on wine imports, we took a quick peek at Nielsen's food, drug and liquor data for November 15, 2008. It's
well documented that imports as a whole have lost share during the
recession, with dollar share down -1.2 points in the four weeks to
November. Domestics, meanwhile, gained 1.2 share points. In the four week period, Argentinean imports showed the most growth, gaining 30.6% in dollar sales and 0.3 market share points.... Meanwhile, the two main European "Old World" wine producers, Italy and France, also lost share in the month to November. Dollar sales of French wine were down a whopping -15.1%, and the country lost as much as much share as Australia (-0.6 points). Italy declined -2.4% in dollar value and lost -0.5% market share points. The strong Euro versus the weak USD makes Old World wines expensive, particularly from well known regions. Industry
insiders have also blamed a lack of modern advertising on the part of
Old World countries and confusing wine labels for softness in the U.S.
OK, we can handle that. It sucks but we soldier on. But the next item amazed me: the really big price points now, in terms of growth, are wines that retail at what?
The category that took the biggest hit was definitely the $6-$8.99 which lost the most share in terms of dollar sales and volume. Meanwhile, wines priced $3-$5.99 gained the most dollar and volume share.
Color me sheltered but do people really drink wine this cheap? And are they already sleeping under bridges and on warm grates? Well, it is a growth market these days. Maybe we'd better lower our sights...
There's a Christmas tree in there somewhere. East 12th Street in 1937. Joyeux Noel, suckers.
And this one may be my favorite in the obvious but pointed irony department:
> Meanwhile, wines priced $3-$5.99 gained the
> most dollar and volume share.
I'm not in the industry, but this specific category might have more to do with the increased availability of these wines than the economy (which does have a real effect on wine buying--I don't disagree there). Let me explain.
I went through a phase a few years ago where I tried every under $7 wine I could find, and blogged about them. Some good, some bad, many just boring. Yet to this day I get a ton of comments and e-mails about these wines, and they're not from people who bought the wines. Rather, the is from from people who received them as gifts or comps.
A florist can buy a $4 bottle of wine and, by including it in a gift basket, tack on $10-20. A hotel can hand someone a $6 bottle with a bow around it for losing a reservation, companies give them out as Christmas bonuses, welcome wagons hand them out left and right... And since almost none of these places provide any information or publish websites, the recipients don't have a clue as to where the wine came from or what it cost.
Until they come to my blog, and despite writing about decent (not necessarily expensive) wine and food for years, the traffic on the cheap stuff is still huge simply because I chose to spell the name properly and list a price. I've had furious readers write me because they found out that they had accepted a crappy room or damaged luggage in exchange for a $5 bottle of wine.
An exception I'll mention is Crane Lake, the $4 alternate label to "Two Buck Chuck". If you've got a big gathering with a lot of people that don't normally drink wine, they're not bad. And the Petite Sirah is great with pizza, while the Chardonnay makes an excellent cooking wine for soups and deglazing roasting pans.
Posted by: Benito | December 17, 2008 at 10:07 PM