This week
Arganica Uncorks A Barrel Of Ideas As Inspired By Some Wine-Soaked Medieval Alleys
9 November 2010
Notes On Deliveries For Nov. 11 2010
Hello Arganicans.
We have talked much in previous emails about Arganica’s hopes to develop a reusable container format. Lately I have come across a few containers that perfectly hit the mark and thought it worthy to circle back on this topic. Now personally I consider olive oil, vinegar and wine as basic kitchen ingredients and plow through a great deal of these tasty elixirs. I dream of a day when Arganica has access to numerous varieties of these in bulk barrels allowing me the opportunity refill my favorite dispensers whenever the mood strikes.
One of my favorite food trips was years ago wandering the back alleys of Malaga Spain. Lining these narrow cobbled medieval goat paths were a series of open doors. A few chalk-lettered signs invited you to peer into the source of the pleasant chat drifting through the night air. Each door opened into a small room, a simple candle-lit plank counter and a wall of small wine barrels. The price per glass was scratched in chalk on the front of each barrel—about 50 cents a glass. There were no pretensions of any sort, and your elbow mate was usually a neighbor or cheery countryman. Young boys would often pop in with a pretty jug under arm, get a refill and trot back out to their family table just down the way. I do not believe I ever saw another tourist on my endless tour of these back alley haunts. I fell in love with taking a draw of small batch—often single-barrel—wine and sampling my way down the moonlit alley. The barrels were clearly being rotated in and out from small winemakers and the feeling of being connected to the wine makers in the nearby hills was very strong. It was an experience lost somewhere along the way in our post industrial, overly litigated and endlessly pre-packaged culture.
I see a future in creating that direct experience with our reusable containers on several fronts:
- The connection to small producers and unique foods unfiltered by the packaging and bottling-line investment
- The beauty of living with well-made containers instead of surrounding ourselves with heaps of plastic and garbage.
- The service we would do to our planet by embracing reusable and recyclable
- The savings of buying in bulk for our customers in addition to the burden of packaging costs
What we currently have reusable containers in many forms:
- Handmade wooden “cool crates”
- Milk in glass bottles (local, organic)
- Seltzer in vintage 120 year-old restored glass and chrome-topped bottles
- Olive oil in refillables (small-batch, artisan)
- Maple syrup (small-batch, artisan) in refillable, ceramic cork-top bottles
- Soda bases (small batch artisan, organic, local) in reusable glass jars
On the drawing board:
- Growlers of beer (small-batch, artisan, local)
- Wood mini barrels of wine and spirits (small-batch, artisan, local)
- Vinegar (small-batch, artisan, local) in glass bottles
- Grape juice vinegar (small-batch, artisan, local) in glass bottles
As usual, Arganica is a work in progress. The working theory is that Arganica transfers to members a minor ownership interest in the company’s containers and manage these vessel for each individual throughout our system. Your name would be on specific containers and your membership commitments would endure that they are returned at the close of the membership through buyback agreements. In this manner the containers would be capitalized by Arganica and all the members would benefit from their use without a weekly deposit charge (only an exit charge upon failure to return). It seems so sane to me—and a unique possibility of our direct-to-door service. Any comment would be very appreciated.
We are shortly to update our website to full online purchasing (hopefully abandoning the spreadsheet for good, much to your relief, we're sure). Our customers will have a personal link that displays the status of their container account.
We are posting a few images this week that invite you into the beauty of these containers. I hope you are as inspired as I am.
Happy eatings from Dominique, Rachel, Tom, Joe, Jessica, Jamie, Monica, Sarah, Doug, Andrew and the whole Argainca team.
