Total Wine & More – RovingRaconteurs.com

A New Reality

Friday, May 1, 2020

The stay-at-home lockdown in Florida ended yesterday. We now anticipate businesses, restaurants, malls, stores, beauty shops & barbershops to re-open, albeit on a limited basis, on Monday. Oh joy! We have missed eating out; browsing the bookstore; walking the mall. Can’t wait ‘til Monday gets here! But in the meantime, we can always go to the “essential stores”: supermarket and liquor store. So, we did.

1 (350x640) — Going shopping requires preplanning–those masks must be sanitized after every use!

Donning masks, we set out on our first priority—a visit to Total Wine & More –to pick up an essential bottle (OK, it was 2 bottles) of the French wine, Gentil Hugel. This particular wine is something I’m planning to serve soon with a fun meal I’ll prepare using Raclette Cheese. You will be hearing more on this pairing in a later post. But for now, back to the day of shopping.

2 (360x640) — Gentil Hugel is a French wine produced in the Alsace region from a blend of grapes. German, French, Swiss and Italian grapes are all available in the region. This leads to some very unique wines.

From the liquor store, we headed over to Publix Market for fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats. Not to mention all the impulse buys and snacks that made their way into our cart!!! But the most interesting thing we noticed was that the shelves continue to be well-stocked. No problem with fresh produce; the meat and seafood counters still have a good selection; and the paper goods section still displayed paper towels, Kleenex and napkins, although a limited supply. Toilet paper, however, remains scarce (who is buying all that TP?!?).