Today is my friend Sophie Barrett’s last day at Chambers Street Wines.
She heads off to work the harvest with Stephane Tissot in the Jura. Trades an apartment in Brooklyn for a flat in Arbois
On one hand, I’m amazingly jealous.
Tissot, Poulsard, Trousseau, Savignon, the Jura–are a larger than life tag cloud of good taste painted in delicious colors.
Super happy for her.
On another, a bit sad and thinking only of myself.
I’m one of those wine customers who stops in 4 or so times a week, spends half an hour, buys a bottle. Then does it again and again.
Add up probably a hundred of these with Sophie over the last years, and you plum the depths of where my love affair with the Jura began, the foundations of my obsession with Savoie and Bugey, with Altesse and Gringet, Mondeuse and Alpine Pinot.
Sophie is also the person who made me understand bubbly as a wine.
I nudged her to write and blog early on.
Her posts on Sophie’s Glass have become musings of a unique type, steeped in geekiness, lightened by her personality and rhymed to her counter intuitive and surprising turns. Read her piece on Pet Nat as a case in point. She obviously loves words and language as she does wine.
Sophie and I are friends.
We connect around wine. I love to buy it, she to sell it. We make a great team in this exchange.
During those fun encounters of banter and decisions, we’ve gotten to know each other. Talking about love of our cats. Our lives. Losses of parents and and cycles of work and life. She collaborates with my son and yearly participates in choosing my birthday presents. None predictable I might add.
And back in the theLocalSip day, she was a huge supporter of the project.
So Sophie—have a great trip!
I trust you’ll stay part of my wine world.
Maybe back at the shop. Maybe opening your own. Maybe a unique importer under your own name or lucky someone elses, who gets to hire you.
Who knows. As a wine friend certainly.
Safe travels and have a great harvest Sophie.
And PLEASE, make certain that before you leave, that someone who loves the Jura and Savoie as we both do, will grab me and say‘ You must try this’ when I wander in the shop.
