Hello Friends,

Today, Monday, November 23, is the fifth birthday of Marion Street Cheese Market offering artisan cheese in Oak Park.  Our doors were opened on Wednesday, November 23, 2004 with great hopes and dreams in downtown Oak Park.  It has been such a wonderful experience serving the residents of Oak Park, River Forest, Forest Park, and so many customers from neighborhoods throughout Chicago.  Your support and patronage has made it possible for us to keep going for five years, and you are greatly appreciated by all of us at Marion Street Cheese Market.

As our way of saying thanks to all of our customers, we are throwing a party.  A birthday open house, of sorts.  And we hope you can join us. 

Here are the details……This Monday we will be offering the following specials in our cheese shop and bistro all day long:

$5.00 glasses of wine – our winemonger Candy is selecting a trio of terrific wines- a red, a white, and a sparkling – for you to enjoy

$5.00 for 2 Craft Drafts – our beerguy Charlie has ordered extra kegs, as we are offering two craft beers on tap for less then the price of 1, so drink up

$5.00 Cheese Flights – Norine, Julie and our cheesemongers are putting together a special cheese flight of cheeses that were on the opening day cheese list at Marion Street Cheese Market back on Nov. 23, 2004

$5.00 appetizer samplers – a sampling of starters created by Chef Leonard Hollander that represent our approach to fine dining – local, sustainable, seasonal and delicious

Free Birthday Cake – our pastry team will bake a special cake for our birthday, for our customers to enjoy all day long at no charge

$5.00 for Every $25.00 in Retail – our business began as a retail store, and Cristeana and her retail team are offering a $5.00 gift card to Marion Street Cheese Market for every $25.00 that you spend on retail products as a special birthday gift to our customers- that includes artisan cheese, fine wine, craft beer, and a tremendous selection of fun products for the kitchen and for entertaining.  This offer is good for Monday, November 23 only, and you must mention this email when checking out to receive this discount.  This is a great time to stock up with cheese and other snacks for pre-dinner munching, wine and beer for your dinner, and a selection of fine chocolates as a hostess gift.

We thank you for your support of our cheese market and bistro and we hope to see you this Monday to help us celebrate!

So I felt the need to retaste the 2007 Domaine de Figueirasses Rosé Vin de Sables again the other day. The Figueirasses is spicy and minerally – a crisp style of Rose with a gorgeous and subtle pinkishorangishsunsetish hue that pink wine freakazoids like me find utterly irresistible.

Thimble full of said wine in plastic souffle cup in hand, I happened to walk past our Rock Stars the CheeseMongers who handed me a small piece of a wheat batard on which was spread our Rouge Noir Brie. There was dollop of tart cherry preserves on top.  I ate the concoction and drank my sip of pink wine. OMG. Holy cow. Wow. In the deep south where I’m from, we’d say that was slap-your-mama-good. (I would never slap anyone much less my mother. In fact, I don’t know where that saying came from because any southern women I’ve ever met would slap you into next week if you as much as looked at her wrong.)

The four-way marriage between the bread, the Brie, the cherry and the wine was - for lack of a more creative word – sublime. I’m still going on about it, days later so much so that now when I want something, I’m gonna say “Pretty Bries with a cherry that’s tart. And a side of Figuierasse.”

That doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue but the cheese and the wine sure do.

I look forward to your combination of luscious things. Please share.

Cheers,

Candy the WineMonger

Seize the wine. If I had a personal motto, that would be it. Life is too short to not drink good wine. And it is definitely too short to drink bad wine. Good thing there’s none of that (bad wine, that is) in our store.

My name is Candy and I am new on the Marion Street Cheese Market block. I am super happy to be here. This is a business committed to things I believe in and want to support via my lifestyle and my work: we practice eco-friendly operations and use recycled and sustainable materials as much as we can. We source local ingredients whenever possible. We are not afraid to try new things. We have the best darn wine selection I’ve seen in my 22 years of being a cork dork. I can’t take any credit for that. All the kudos for our fantastic wine collection go to our brilliant wine buyer, Julie. She’s a walking cask of wine knowledge and I am honored to be working alongside her.

Birders (of which I am one too) often get turned on to birding by a single bird and then find themselves managing a lifelong search for and obsession with the feathered critters. That certainly happened to me. My bird was the Blacksmith Plover. Not particularly colorful or exciting to watch but something about him struck me during my first safari in Kenya in 1995. Since then, I’ve added almost 2,000 bird species from five continents to my life list. Admittedly and proudly, I am a complete bird nerd and surpass myself in geekdom only when it comes to wine.

The wine equivalent of my Blacksmith Plover was Roederer Brut Premier NV. From the first sip of that toasty bold Champagne to the present day and who knows how many bottles later, I’ve enjoyed, studied, lived and worked with wine. I wish I had been diligent about keeping a life list of my wines but I wasn’t. I guess i was too busy enjoying the life that goes alongside a good bottle of wine - seizing the wine and the moment.

My job is to help you find fun bottles to take home that are going to be perfect for whatever you want them to be perfect for. While we’re doing that, I’d love to hear your wine story. How did you get into the vine? What was your Plover of the grape world? Is there a single bottle about which you can recall every single little detail - from the label to the last lick on the side of the glass? Or did you start with wine coolers and work your way into things with corks? (Before the Roederer, I did enjoy me some Seagram’s Peach Wine Coolers…)

It’s a dynamic vibrant place, this world of wine we share. However you got here, I’m really glad you did. Mindfully and responsibly, carpe vinum.

Cheers,

Candy, winemonger