Website: www.datingmakeovercoach.com
How long have you been/were you a regular? 2 years
Most frequented store? Barriques-Fitchburg
Most ordered item? Red eye
What’s your story? How is/was Barriques part of your life? Barriques is my office and my home away from home.  Truly.  At least 4-5 days a week I leave my house to go work, meet clients, feed my caffeine fix, eat great food, taste wine and dish with the ridiculously friendly staff.  In the process, I have met other regulars that have become some of my best friends and consistently help me with my business and vice versa.  Barriques is the best office I could ask for.

Whether you are looking for gifts for the beer rookie in your life, or you will share the holidays w/ a true beer geek, we have some great beer choices that will satisfy any palate.

For the Beer Rookies

Samuel Smith’s Gift Set (3 beers + a logo glass) – world class beers and a glass to keep
Santa’s Butt Porter – they’ll blush and giggle while drinking this porter
Bad Elf Ale – A good introductory IPA for the beer novice
Great Lakes Christmas Ale – a spicy, malty brew that tastes like Christmas

For the Beer Geek

Gouden Carolus Noel – Fruity and spicy with great strength; good with food.
Affligem Noel – dark; spicy apple fruit; complex AND easy to drink = dangerous
Duvel Gift Set – The best of the Strong Golden ales from Belgium. Plus a cool glass
Insanely Bad Elf – big 12% sipper; perfect for the first blizzard of the year, and the second or third or fourth….I hate shoveling.

Up next, Beers for Savoring and Cellaring….
Cheers, David

This year I’m particularly excited about what we’ve brought in. Good variety, great beer and plenty of time to do your beer shopping before Christmas. But don’t wait too long….some of these are very, very limited and when they’re gone…they’re gone. Let me first break things down into three categories of beer buying to help steer you in the right direction.
1. Beer for drinking – the ones I like drink on a regular basis and what we will talk about here today
2. Beer for gift-giving - both for the novice and the certified beer geek in your life.
3. Beer to savor/cellar – rarities/expensive stuff
So let’s first talk a bit about some of my favorite everyday drinking holiday beers.
The Bells Christmas Ale is a slightly hoppy scotch ale; it easily get put in the ‘almost too easy to drink’ category(which by the way is a good thing)

The Shiner Cheer easily wins my vote for best beer packaging, probably of the year. After reading that this is a Texas peach and pecan infused dopplebock you might be asking me what the he** am I thinking. All I can say is try it. You’ll be blown away.
Lump of Coal could be mistaken for a gimmick, but it is a seasonal favorite of mine; a stout for the winter season; have it with dessert.

Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale is a great, classic holiday beer; a favorite; dry hopped and fruity IPA.

Capital Winter Skal. This hometown brew is a complex lager that impresses me every year.

By weeks end, all of these should be available at Barriques Fitchburg, Middleton and Monroe St.
Up next – Beer for Gift Giving
Cheers, David

Joe Katchever and his father Tony installed a small brewhouse in a cramped basement on Pearl Street, in downtown La Crosse, in 1999 and began to brew beer. A lot of beer came out of that basement to supply thirsty beer drinkers in western Wisconsin. I drank a lot of that beer while living in La Crosse, and have made sure to bring a couple of 6-packs back with me each time I visited the area.

The hard work has paid off and the move into their own 30 barrel brewhouse has allowed for major increases in production. So, after many years at the Great Taste of the Midwest they’ve brought their beer to Madison and when Joe stopped by last week I didn’t hesitate to bring in the 4 beers he has allocated for our area.

Even though they have expanded their capacity, Pearl Street is still a small brewery, and self-distributing, so you won’t find it everywhere. Barriques Market in Fitchburg and Barriques Wine & Spirits in Middleton are two locations where you can purchase 6-packs to take home.

Still family owned, Pearl Street Brewery has built a reputation for style, quality and independence. Joe and the gang brew on the 30 barrel system, and on their very small rolling, pilot brewhouse, they call the “Mini Mejo” in a reclaimed 100 year old boot factory. They do have a tap room where you can stop in to taste the beers.

The Following beers are available at our Fitchburg and Middleton locations:

Pearl Street Pale Ale
A classic American Pale Ale. Dry hopped for a spicy, floral hop nose with solid bitterness on the palate. Finishes smooth enough to make you want more. 6% abv.

D.T.B. Brown Ale
I’ve only recently come back to brown ales after years of disappointment. This beer has helped restore my faith in the style. Great balance between the nutty, roasty flavors from the malts and the woodsy, spicy hops. I’ve had it with cheeses, meat dishes and desserts…it has paired well with them all.

El Hefe Hefeweizen
When I lived in La Crosse this was the beer of summer. It’s now available all year, and has that classic clove/banana aroma with a not-too-filling crisp wheat body. Some people really like a lemon in this beer, but I think it’s great without it.

That’s What I’m Talkin’ ‘Bout Organic Rolled Oat Stout
Full flavored stout with a smooth mouthfeel making it eminently drinkable. Chocolate and roasty notes dominate the flavors with a good hop edge.

Visit Pearl Street at http://www.pearlstreetbrewery.com/.

-Cheers, David

Plump Jack Winery

We arrived in San Fran late on a Thursday night and were staying at the downtown Hilton. Tired and thoroughly famished, we took the concierges advice and hit up a place called First Crush, right around the corner from hotel. As I had previously stated, we were traveling w/ our favorite ‘drinking couple’, named as such for the propensity of the 4 of us mutually encouraging each other to consume far more adult beverages then is certainly necessary when we go out. We did a fine job living up to those expectations that night and fell into bed anticipating the day ahead. The time change gave me the muscle to get up very early despite the previous nights festivities and I cruised over to a near by Peets coffee for some caffeine. 5:30 in the morning and I was greeted by big smile and two big cups of hot brown water to blow the cob webs away. For the rest of the day we walked our way around the city, first taking the trolley from the Powell & Market turntable all the way over to Fisherman’s Warf. I know what your are thinking, what a bunch of tourists. But alas, I was under orders from my train loving 7 year old that if I didn’t get some footage of us riding a trolley he was going to be ticked. So we trollied. We used our feet from there basically burning most of the day meandering back towards the general direction of our hotel. As a retailer, I marveled at the gazillion little trinkets on display in some of the storefronts in China town, not because there were a gazillion of them, but because I didn’t see so much as a speck of dust on anything. Seriously, what did they do w/ the dust?
That night, we got a very lucky 6:30 reservation at The Slanted Door down in the Ferry Building and had a great, great dining experience. The Riesling/German dominated wine list was like reading greek to me but we got some great advice from the wine steward and had a great time. I heartily recommend a visit to The Slanted Door if you are in the area. After a quick drink at the Water Bar we called it a night.

Saturday, we drove up to Napa with a fairly full day of wine appointments ahead of us.

Art at The Entrance To Artesa

Compliments of the recession, we were staying the night in Yountville at the Vintage Inn. That night we grabbed a fun dinner at Mustards Grill and again crashed early. Sunday we were similarly booked up but I kicked off the morning right w/ an early visit to Bouchon Bakery right across the street. I chatted up the folks manning the ovens, and came back to our room with 9 peoples worth of pastries that my wife and I sat around and gnawed on until we headed over to Joseph Phelps for our first meeting.

Ready to Taste At Joseph Phelps

So here are a couple of my thoughts, take-aways and to-dos from our adventure:

Are you sustainable, I’m sustainable, Let’s be sustainable – During our second day of winery visits as soon as our host started to get the words “horns of manure” out of her mouth I said ‘Woah!’ No more horns, no more manure! W/ one exception every place that we visited harped on the fact that they were far down the path of farming either organically and/or biodynamically. Biodynamic farming in particular, was on the tip of every wineries tongue that we visited. There is a bit of hocus-pocus about some of the practices(100% my opinion) but, in general, this is a great trend that is healthier for them and healthier for the consumer. But boy, I was I tired of hearing about burying cows heads and spraying poop all over the vineyard. In the process of doing some research before I left, I happened up this very well written biodynamic FAQ from Grgich that is a great primer on biodynamic farming. If, you want a bit more cynical take, check out one of my favorite wine blogs, Vinography for his take. Either way, it brought to the surface a longstanding issue we have had at Barriques that we need to finally solve once and for all, the issue of how we can better communicate in our stores, whether a wine is organically or biodynamically produced.

The service industry is capable of great acts of service – I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but it was at dinner on our last night at San Francisco at The Slanted Door and somewhere mid-way through our meal I asked my gang, ‘have you guys noticed how great the service has been at all the places we had eaten over past day?”. I wasn’t just talking about at the relatively expensive Slanted Door where it should be(and was) but at the not-so expensive restaurant we ate at the night before, at 5:30 am where I was first customer in line at the Peets coffee, at lunch that day, everywhere. The longer that we have been in our business at Barriques, most certainly a service business, the more it bothers me when I hear about Barriques giving less then great service and when I hear people bashing the service industry in general, for providing bad service. Barriques has some great ‘service providers’ w/ in our company and although some element of customer service training has always been part of our orientation process for our new people I think we need to do some more dedicated training to make sure we are always delivering a great experience.

It is hard to find ‘value’ wines in Napa - By ‘value’ I mean inexpensive, not, good value for the dollar. I know you can find them but you really, really have to try. My winery choices clearly were going to make it hard from the start, but in the process of planning where I was going to go, I’ll be honest, I came up w/ very few places that actual sell ‘value’ wines and that make their way into into Wisconsin. In fact, of the 60 – 70 wines we tried I can only think of only 2 or 3 that would retail for less then $20! Given what is happening in the wine market right, now I would be shaking in my boots if all I had in my portfolio were wines retailing for more then $30. Who is buying that stuff?

That’s it. I’d love to hear any comments or questions and thanks for listening.

-MRW