I met the mad wine girl at the Seattle Cheese Festival. Not the event where hordes of tourists jostled for samples in the Pike Place Market, but the day of seminars held a few weeks ago for restaurant people, "trade" (which sounds so dirty), and random people like me. It was stultifying and fascinating by turns, as daylong conferences are wont to be. Cheese was frequently referred to as "product," and much amazing product was tasted-including unpasteurized, super-creamy, crazy-good product that's illegal to sell in this country because the FDA is so fucking uptight. Local farmers talked about their goats by name.
In the afternoon, during the "Incorporating Cheese into Your Menu" Q&A period, a restaurant employee said, absolutely seriously, "I'd like to ask a question about cutting the cheese." I was the only one who laughed, and thus felt a little lonely. Then the mad wine girl arrived to co-chair "Perfect Pairings." She's named Maggie, and she had kind of a goth look, her black eyeliner and hair looking nicely Halloweeny with her traffic-cone-orange DeLaurenti Specialty Food Market T-shirt; she's the keeper of the wine department at the shop, which, while hellishly located in the Market, is one of the best things about this city. She said funny and intriguing things: Her latest favorite food/wine combo is potato chips with champagne, a lower-brow take on the salt-and-bubbles trend of frites and champagne. She described a particular wine and cheese duo as linking arms and strolling off into the sunset together.
Afterward, she was still eating cheese and I was wondering with some alarm whether I'd ever want to eat cheese again (answer: yes, in less than 24 hours). I sidled up to her, made nice, and asked her if she'd go have snacks and wine with me.
We met a week or so later at the spare, calm bar at Eva, near Green Lake; outside it was pouring rain and beaming sun at the same time. We ate an eggy cloud of savory Cabrales flan ($6); an amazing, messy lamb burger ($10) that we sawed in half; and gnocchi with pea vines, morels, asparagus, and cream ($14). We drank glasses of Riesling from New Zealand ($6, "dry and minerally, don't be afraid," quoth she) and French cab franc ($7, like regular Cabernet but "not so manicured, maybe a little messed up").
What makes the mad wine girl mad? The corporatization of the wine business; the surge in asinine, insulting wine marketing aimed at women; the fact that MTV won't let Nine Inch Nails perform in front of a George W. Bush backdrop. What makes her happy? Wine by and for the people, for drinking-not as some dumb, pretentious centerpiece. ■
DeLaurenti Specialty Food and Wine is at 1435 First Ave, 622-0141; Eva Restaurant and Wine Bar is at 227 N 56th St, 633-3538. The mad wine girl's blog is at tarandviolets.com.
