What I am Drinking Now — Is In Whole Foods, Addison

by Andrew Chalk

If you really want to laugh at my palate, or lack thereof, there has never been a better time. Whole Foods Addison (the new one that does not yet have Whole Parking Lot) is sticking my recommendation by bottles of wine using a selling device called ‘shelf talkers’. That means a short paragraph describing the wine and what I think commends it to you. I submitted about eight recommendations but only saw three there last weekend. The Gruet sparkling wine from New Mexico is a bargain summer sparkler.        

The Duchman Vermentino featuring High Plains grapes from this Driftwood, TX winery is also great for summer and best with seafood.

The Perrin Côtes du Rhône is the red of the bunch. Ideal with steaks and barbecue.

Other people in the same program whose opinions you might find more credible are Addison chef Richard Chamberlain (Chamberlain’s Steak and Chop House, Chamberlain’s Fish Market, Dr. Kildare). He recommends the Newton Chardonnay served with diver scallops – a choice I wholeheartedly agree with. Russ Kane, noted Texas wine blogger and author, who also recommended the Duchman Vermentino, and Melanie Ofenloch who blogs as Dallas Wine Chick (a title that I had hoped to use but she beat me to it) who recommends a $60 sparkling wine and, for that reason, it is her place that I shall be partying at this summer.

At the moment this so-called ‘Wine Geeks’ program is only at the Addison store but Wholefoods threatens to take it area-wide unless a ‘Dallas Spring’ type uprising movement prevents it. I hope that they change the title, as ‘Geeks’ sounds party gollumesque and partly snobbish and this program is really the opposite. It is an attempt to deliver the democratic expertise, found in social media, that is all a byproduct of that wonderful creation, the Internet.