It's getting a bit
spooky up in here...
So far this Halloween season has shown a disappointing dearth of atmospherics. Instead of dismal, dripping vistas and fog-wrapped witchery, we are in the grips of a depressingly beautiful stretch of golden Indian Summer. Fortunately, the glorious weather hasn't stopped our two shops from experiencing our annual grisly hauntings. We're infested by enormous arachnids, and the strings of hanging lilliputian carcasses showed up in the middle of the night, along with our new full-sized pal, Boney McSkells. Boney can often be found enjoying a glass of wine in the sunlight with his friend Severin the Severed Hand, so say hello next time you stop by. No sign of the Werewolf-Headed Dracula Man yet, but it's only a matter of time...
In spite of the cheerful weather, we've planned some spine-tingling Halloween fun for the next two weeks, including the return of the most terrifying Saturday tasting in history. Read on gentle customers...your very souls depend on it!
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Thursday, November 6th
at our Raleigh Shop
7:33 pm - $36
Join us for a fun and educational evening of wine that chronicles a vine's bud break in the spring to each of its grape's being lovingly squeezed into the bottles that we hold so dear. We cover how vines are grown and wine is made, as well as how to read a label, how to buy wine, how to store wine, how to drink, er, taste wine... and we'll debunk many wine myths throughout this two hour class.
(includes tasting wines, video presentation, and handouts)
Thursday, November 6th @ 7:33 pm
$36 per person
Reservations required
(Corkscrew) Operators are standing by:
(919) 831-9463
To celebrate American Cheese month, we're loading up on absolutely world-class cheeses produced in the United States - many from right here in North Carolina. These extremely high-quality, traditionally produced cheeses are made by the skilled and toughened hands of proud, passionate artisans and aged under impeccably precise conditions, resulting in such deliciousness as to dissolve your knees into puddles of whey upon first taste.
We will be sampling a different US cheese every Saturday this month during our regular 12-3 tastings, so stop by and get cheesy...American Style!
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Some wine w/ that cheese?
Fall in love with The Loire!
Speaking of cheese, it's arguable that the Loire valley provides the world with the most Cheese-friendly wines of all! Discover, rediscover, or just plain fall in love with some of our current favorites from France's Loire. This massive 600+ mile river and its many tributaries are home to a network of wine regions brimming with autumnal romance! We have erected monuments made of Loire Valley wines in our Durham and Raleigh stores to help us sing the praises of these fall-friendly delights!
Real Customer Comment:
"We love Wine Authorities more every day."
- Ian E.
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This Tuesday, October 28th, we present our FREE
midweek wine tasting. Every Tuesday is tasty!
Haunting Values for Spooky Festivities
We may feast better at Thanksgiving and rack up on gifts at the end of the year, but Halloween is the holiday that really knows how to throw a party. Join us at next week's Tasty Tuesday as we explore some fiendishly fun and frighteningly affordable party wines to help bolster our Halloween festivities. We'll begin with a bountiful box of of Viognier from close to the grape's birthplace in the Rhone Valley. Next, we'll set our sights on a beautifully brutish northern Portuguese blend of the very black Baga grape and Merlot (whose name, incidentally, is derived from the French word, "Merle," meaning "blackbird"). Our final wine comes from the western Venetian province of Verona. Not only is the Veneto one of the mask-i-est places on earth, but the black Corvina grape of the Veronese countryside may very well be named after corvids (crows, ravens, etc). Don't worry, there's nothing to fear... except missing these wines!
And don't forget:
Our Tasty Tuesday 15% Half-Case Discount!
After you taste, put together 6 bottles from our Tasty Tuesday lineup, and we'll take an entire 15% off!
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This Saturday from 12 to 3 PM
in Durham & Raleigh
"try before you buy" at
our FREE tasting
The floorboards creak under your feet. The wan light of a sinister yellow moon shines through the broken window through which tendrils of mist creep, snaking along the floor. The wind howls...or is that the screaming of damned souls? Your terror grows, but you must continue. You must see what's behind the next door. Is it a skeleton? Is it some kind of Werewolf-headed Dracula Man? No!
The Saturday
INCONCEIVABLE
HORROR!!!
Oh dear friends, do we have a spine-tingling tale to tell. We have walked the vineyards of madness, tasted the true grapes of wrath, and plunged our maimed and bleeding hands into the rich, loamy soils...OF DEATH! In our quest to bring you the most unique estate wines from this world (and the worlds beyond), we have gazed into a swirling maw of pure nightmare. We barely escaped with our lives - and we certainly surrendered our sanity to the void - but we brought something back with us. Five things, in fact. Five wines with stories much too terrible to tell...YET WE WILL TELL THEM! On the final Saturday before Halloween, join us! But beware...though it is you who swallows the wine, it is the wine that swallows your very soul...
Chateau de Brézé
Saumur Blanc 2011
{organic} 100% Chenin Blanc
(Middle Loire, France)
CRISP PEACH & HONEY, ZESTY CITRUS & MINERAL, INTENSELY VIBRANT
Chateau de Breze might already seem a pretty spooky place by moonlight, with its imposing bulk of wicked-looking towers and warren of subterranean tunnels running beneath the estate, but we were shocked to discover that it was the site of a brutal crime. In the late 1970s, Myriam de Dreux Breze (sister of chateau owner Charlotte Marie) was murdered by her nefarious husband, estate groundskeeper Monsieur Pedron. Her ghost apparently haunts the cellar on particularly cold nights. In a grisly footnote, Pedron was acquitted of the crime, only to murder his second wife a few years later...
 {biodynamic} 60% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon (Bordeaux, France)
BLACK CHERRY, WARM CINNAMON, CHALKY TANNINS, HERBAL ELEGANCE
During the grisly French revolution, Chateau La Grolet's owner, Elie-Louis Dufaune de Lajarte, was a staunch royalist...up until the point where he was captured by an angry mob and decapitated via a Guillotine erected in his vineyards. Some say that the phantom of his headless corpse still stalks the vineyards on moonless nights, watering the vines with aristocratic blood. One of daringly macabre imagination might attribute the fierce and vibrant minerality of this wine to that ghastly irrigation...
Pic Saint-Loup 2011
"L'Arbouse"
{organic} 60% Syrah, 40% Grenache (Eastern Languedoc, France)
BLACKBERRY & RASPBERRY, DARK CHOCOLATE, SPICE & EARTH
Powerful, dark, and mysterious, this blackish red comes from the foot of an imposing mountain of solid stone with an even more imposing name: Pic Saint Loup, which almost translates to "peak of the holy wolf." Coincidentally (or not), it was within walking distance of these vineyards that the giant wolf-beast of Gévaudan famously terrorized the countryside for six years in the mid-1700s...
Amontillado [375 ml]
"La Garrocha"
{Organic} 100% Palomino
(Jerez / Sherry, Spain)
DRY, RICH CARAMEL & VANILLA, FRESH FIG & MINERAL
If we've learned anything from Edgar Allen Poe, it's that the promise of some delicious Amontillado Sherry is enough to blind a man to danger, dull his wits, and ultimately lure him to a horrible death, chained to a wall and buried alive in a dank catacombs. It's called "immurement," and it happens more than one might think. Be very suspicious if a friend offers you a taste of Amontillado, especially if that friend is a sociopathic Italian with a hair-trigger temper. Or just maybe, good Amontillado is worth a horrible death...
(Southern Valencia, Spain)
GORGEOUS VIOLET PERFUME, SWEET BLACKBERRY, HONEYED SPICE & COCOA
3:00 am, "the soul's midnight," is that mysterious time during which strange things are most likely to happen. Each person's connection to this world (rather than that beyond) is at its most tenuous. Some say that this is the most unlucky segment of the night, the peak of the "witching hour," and the moment that evil is at its most brazen. We don't have time to worry about that right now, however. This wine is simply too delicious...
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Join us, read us, communicate with us...
 
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Hope to see you Saturday!
Our best to you,
Grand Poobah & the Wine Authorities staff
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We don't spam you, we practice our wine love on wine drinkers by sharing our weekly wackiness.
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Six for Sixty
deal!
 Here's our deal this month; a package of six reds or six whites for $60 plus tax. You can double down and buy two: one of each or two of one for $110 plus tax. Sorry, no other discounts apply.
Show me the six
REDS
Show me the six
WHITES
[click links to see this month's selection!]
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on the Enomatic
in Durham: 
Here's what's on tap, subject to change on a whim or fancy
Whites (48˚F):
Meinklang
Pinot Gris
"Graupert"
$17.99 on sale
Chateau La Colombière
Bouysselet Blanc
"Le Grand B"
$28.99 on sale
Jean Paul Brun
Beujolais Rosé
"Rosé d'Folie"
$16.99 on sale
Domaine de la Chauviniere
Muscadet
$9.99 on sale
Reds (65˚F):
Hook & Ladder
Zinfandel
$25.99 on sale
Abbaye Sylva Plana
Faugeres
"Les Novices"
$17.99 on sale
Stolpman
Syrah
$26.99 on sale
Casa Santos Lima
Lisboa Tinto
"Cigarra"
$15.99 on sale
Chateau Bel Air
Saint Estephe
$41.99
Domaine Cedric Bardin
Coteaux du Giennois
$19.99 on sale
Pères de l'Eglise
Chateauneuf du Pape
$39.99 on sale
Pyren
Shiraz
$23.99 on sale
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on the Enomatic
in Raleigh:
Here's what's on tap, subject to change on a whim or fancy
Whites (48º F):
Cooper Mountain
Pinot Gris
$19.99 on sale
Reine-Juliet
Syrah / Grenache Rosé
$11.99 on sale
Bodegas Los Frailes
Monastrell Rosado
$9.99 on sale
Eric de Suremain
Rully 1er Cru
$29.99 on sale
Clos Lapeyre
Jurançon Sec
"Mantoulan"
$38.99 on sale
Netzl
Chardonnay
$19.99 on sale
Cave Freudenreich
Riesling
"Terre d'Apollon"
$17.99 on sale
SteinRiesling "Blauschiefer" $19.99 on sale Reds (65º F): Bodegas Arrocal Ribera del Duero $19.99 on sale Mas Granier "Cuvée Psalmodi" $11.99 on sale Paul D Zweigelt $12.99 on sale Laetitia Pinot Noir $26.99 on sale Terrabianca Dolcetto d'Alba "Brichet" $16.99 Tre Ricci Cabernet Sauvignon $29.99 on sale
Bodegas Los Frailes
Valencia Monastrell $9.99 on sale Bodegas Perica Rioja Crianza "Olagosa" $16.99 on sale Anton Bauer Zweigelt "Feuersbrunn" $14.99 on sale Chateau La Colombière Fronton "Coste Rouge" $24.99 on sale Occhipinti "Il Frappato" $34.99 on sale Domaine Magellan Hérault Rouge
"Le Fruit Défendu" $11.99 on sale Brutocau Merlot "Bliss Vineyard" $22.99 Merietta "Old Vine Red" $14.99 on sale
Hartwell
Cabernet Sauvignon "H" $49.99 on sale Laurent Combier Crozes Hermitage "L" $26.99 on sale
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Firsthand Foods
Fresh Local Sausages
- Bratwurst
- Country Breakfast
- Spicy Italian
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 Artisan Bacon Nodine's North Country Firsthand Foods Vande Rose Farms |
Crackers
Granola
Spreads
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Big Spoon
Roasters
Local peanut butters
8oz Jar - $9.99
16oz Jar - $16.99
or...
- Peanut Cashew
- Peanut Almond
- Penut Pecan
- Chai Spice (8oz size only)
8oz Jar - $12.99
16oz Jar - $17.99
8oz Jar - $13.00
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Counter Culture Coffee
- Rustico
- Farmhouse Blend, Equador & Peru
- Tsheya, Congo
- Baroida Late Harvest, Papua New Guinea
- Remera, Rwanda
- Espresso Toscano
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- Community supported farms & entrepreneurs.
- Socially & financially underutilized urban land.
- Healthy neighborhoods & thriving markets.
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Archived Weekly Emails
If for some absolutely crazy reason you feel the need to re-read our previous weekly email you can now click on this link:
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Please note:
We can not be held accountable for our previous, current or future writings.
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