PARA LLEVAR

BY a stroke of luck we’d both forgotten about the first Monday engagement. Well, she was sick and it slipped her mind. I’d just forgotten. But we were mutually determined to reschedule in a week and actually tell people about it. Carly & Simon drove up from their digs in Orange County and brought a case of their home-bottled wine under Simon’s label FREE JAZZ. This cuveé is under the Vital Juices brand; the grape: Kyoho from local secret, Ha’s Farm. It’s uplifting party juice in every sense of the term, and made naturally with no additives. Simon likes to use grapes that you normally don’t see bottled as wines. One of last year’s cuveés was with a more regular concord grape varietal, but still not something traditionally seen in wines aside from Manischewitz.

Vital Juices has a very similar familial vibe and held together nicely with the eclectic plates we brought out as people started to fill in. A lot of the time was just Carly & Simon and Brenner and Evan and I. Good company to say the least, and good wine, and papaya salad and sweet potato curry, and some cuts of steak and black pepper sausage with a grilled onion.

Sophia and Josh rolled in suspiciously late, and Alice and another kid from GTA came through not long after with leftover pizza. The wine abided. We all went home happy with bottles Vitals Juice and thanked the power couple behind it profusely. We need to do that again sometime.