Classic Wines

The Perfect Birthday

My friend Blythe had a birthday last week, and so did I, but hers was so much more planned out... so hers is the one we'll discuss. This was mostly due to one of her friends so graciously planning it for her. This once again illustrates for me the wondrous powers of DELEGATING. Having recently produced a play I wrote in Tribeca with little to no delegation at all, I am now seeing proofs everywhere I look that a team pulling in force can accomplish so much more than a lone wolf battling alone. Or wolfette, rather. Having three pre-arranged destinations, websites and all, emailed to the guests weeks ahead of time, let the birthday girl glow in her party dress with a calm that rivals Martha Stewart. (I'll skip the snapshot of me the night after on my birthday, which was more Mad Cow than Martha.) I thought I'd share this great birthday journey with y'all and see if it might help some other stumblestruck Leos out there.

First, every party should be dress up. If you're going to go through the trouble of planning an evening with guests, wear a party dress! Or party suit! Or gorilla suit! Something. Come on, you can wear that Safety Outfit any day -- birthdays are a chance to dig that once-worn gem out of the back 40 of your closet! Wearing something special sets the tone. You wouldn't see a police officer on patrol without their uniform -- (despite being illegal) you need it to click the brain into a certain mode. Same thing with party clothes. Who's going to hang from the chandelier: the girl in the turquoise 80s prom dress, or the girl in sweats? Exactly. Fear no costume nor sequin. That's all I'm sayin.' So now you're all dressed up, you need somewhere to go:

Blythe's evening worked because it had an arc to it, and it was broken into threes. Everyone knows the magic of Three, but more than that, it gives the guest of honor a chance to decrease intimacy as the evening goes on. One destination for the whole evening, and it's all or nothing, but with three destinations you can increase the guest list as you go along. This serves a double purpose for those inviting guests who may not know one another. If you start the evening with a conversation starter (an event or an interesting locale) then cozy them up with some dinner, by the time the drinks are flowing at Destination 3, you can leave them all alone assured by now everyone's best friends.

We started our evening at an old-fashioned cocktail club, the Clover Club in Brooklyn for some pre-dinner drinks. This was an intimate gathering of her close friends, where we sat in high-backed wooden booths, gazed at the 19th century mahogany bar (complete with vested bartenders) and sipped true old-fashioned cocktails made with recipes over 100-years old from the beverage's conception. We felt very classy and cultured (not to mentioned time-warped) while we bonded and celebrated Blythe's further ascension into wisdom. Excelsior. (More on that later.)

From here our merry crew walked to our next location for a beautiful Neapolitan dinner. Note: All of these destinations were within walking distance. Not only was this a great timesaver, but also a much more fun, group-centered way to travel from place to place with much less likelihood of losing people along the way.

We arrived at Savoia with our huge reserved table waiting where we sat down and ordered bottles of a Southern Italian wine named Sfida, which is fittingly an Italian word for "challenge" -- one of the themes of our evening. As we progress in years, birthdays become less about ponies and cake and more about introspection. The party is still there, but under it there's a deeper stock-taking of what another year has accomplished and what the next one will bring. In honor of her birthday and the goals my friend is well on her way to achieving, she had "Excelsior" tattooed on her wrist -- the Latin word meaning "ever upward." Cooincidentally enough this is also the motto for New York State, which is a very fitting battle cry for the people who have chosen to call New York home.

Sfida is named so because it challenges the expected look and taste of Southern Italian wine. It's a product of the collaboration between Matt Brothers and the Cantina del Locorotondo, a modern co-operative in the seaside growing region of central Puglia. In addition to native varieties such as Primitivo, Locorotondo's farmers have also had success with Aglianico and Cabernet. The particular Sfida wine we enjoyed was 70% Primitivo and 30% Negroamaro and at $36/bottle we were very pleased with our choice. We enjoyed it so much we ordered a few more bottles to round out the pitchers of homemade sangria that were already going around. We shared the wine around the table family-style much as we did the food, swapping a piece of exotically topped pizza for some calamari salad, some olives from a cheese plate for to-die-for Carpaccio. Some people had an early morning the next day, so after dinner we parted into two groups -- those stumbling, uh, GOING home, and those marching proudly to…

(Final) Destination 3: Brooklyn Social. We walked the short distance to this hidden little cubby for our after-dinner drinks and revelry, enjoying some more old-fashioned atmosphere complete with vested bartenders!! (I'm seeing a theme...) Here we kept the celebration going completing the arc of the evening which took us from the refined exploration with a few friends of some interesting drinks, to lots of friends sharing dinner, though only talking to those nearby, to the mingling free for all that ensued at Brooklyn Social, capping the evening in an ultimately relaxed way.

The overarching theme here (besides bartenders in vests) was relaxation and fun. Nowhere was there a birthday-zilla, nowhere were there frustrated or confused guests -- and there WERE guests, because everyone had had enough notice to schedule accordingly.

So for your next birthday, pick a close friend who knows you well (and doesn't have too large an ironic streak) and ask in lieu of a gift that they plan your day for you. They'll be honored and have fun doing it, and you will get to sit back and calmly receive all the love you so well deserve. Happy Birthday fellow Leos!!!