Just add wine

Tacoma has always delighted me with its uncanny ability to present The Random. And when The Random mixes it up with wine, I become positively giddy.



One longtime random wine haunt of mine has been the Chevron gas station off Pearl Street near Point Defiance Park. While I loved the ability to multi-task —gallon o’ gas with that liter of wine? Yes please! — my friends would look at me with something akin to horror when I would offer up a bottle of “gas station wine.” When that wine was a bottle of Townshend T3 (sadly, not a bottle carried there anymore) or a cute bottle of “Rosé the Riveter” those expressions would meld into pleased surprise.



Now I can expand my random wine shop repertoire to include two new fabulously established businesses. I can’t wait to say, “Oh I’ll just get myself an antique wardrobe, get my eyebrows waxed, and pick up some Infinity Soup with a bottle of red at Sanford & Son.” Or, I can tell the honey, “I’m just going to get my hair done” — and come back with a fresh new look and bottles of shampoo and chardonnay from Azarra Salon.



Yes, wine is coming to Sanford & Son and Azarra Salon. Unfortunately, neither place is technically ready for me yet.



Sanford & Son welcomes Abby’s on Broadway to its Middle Floor Merchants. The wine shop received its license to sell last Thursday, and they are working on getting moved in and ready to go. They’ll be joined soon by Infinite Soup in the downstairs Library (huzzah!), who will serve up their hot goodness from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., daily.

At Azarra Salon, owner Aura Mae’s specialty has always been dishing up The Random with serious quality. She has a disclaimer on her Web site, after all, explaining that, if you take yourself too seriously, perhaps this isn’t the salon for you.



“In California, if you aren’t offered a glass of wine, you feel snubbed,” Aura Mae quips, adding hastily, that it’s legal in Cali. In Washington, the liquor laws are, she suggests, a tad more “provincial.”



She elaborates, “They (the Washington State Liquor Board) don’t just hand out licenses. While there are salons that do pour glasses to clients, that is, technically, illegal.”

She warns against the expectation of having a glass in the chair. For one, it doesn’t sound that fun to swallow hair snippets with your sips. Then there’s the matter of bouquet. Aura Mae jokes, “Mmmm, I smell blackberry, and … ammonia?”



But without a joke, Aura Mae clearly states, “We have a license to sell bottles of wine for off-premise consumption.” She adds, “We’re very interested in following the rules. We want to show the liquor board we’re good people.”



Currently, she’s building an inventory and expecting to open for wine sales in a few weeks. Those wines, bottles under $20 with labels that share the irreverent values of the salon (expect things like “Bitch,” “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” and others of that ilk) will be deftly paired with recipes and commentary via the Azarra Salon Web site (www.Azarra.com) and other media like Twitter and Facebook.



 Aura Mae’s goal is to build her wine sales to the point where it’s 50 percent of her business, which will enable her to do wine tastings in an adjacent room.

“The more wine people buy, the sooner that can happen,” she says, in her funny-but-serious, pragmatic manner. She points out, quite seriously, “We’re a business. We’d like to make money.”



And then she points out, pragmatically, “These are dicey economic times. I want to be selling whatever people are buying (that’s legal).”



[Chevron, 5043 N. Pearl St., Tacoma, 253.759.7602]



[Abby’s on Broadway, Sanford & Son’s Middle Floor Merchants, 743 Broadway, Tacoma, 253. 272.0334]



[Azarra Salon, 1944 Pacific Ave., Suite 210, Tacoma, 253.752.1519]