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Arrow to celebrate ‘Breakfast Club’ member’s milestone
The Arrow Wine & Spirits store at 2950 Far Hills Drive in Kettering will be toasting the 90th birthday of Dick Dempsey, one of the charter members of the shop’s informal “Breakfast Club” wine-tasting group, on Saturday, July 9 (tomorrow).
What is the Breakfast Club, you may ask? Let me reach wayyyyyy back into the musty ol’ archives of the Dayton Daily News and dust off a story I wrote nearly two decades ago about the Breakfast Club at Arrow, which has morphed a bit over the years but is still going strong:
THE BREAKFAST CLUB
WINE TASTINGS GIVE A SPIRITED START TO THEIR SATURDAYS
By Mark Fisher DAYTON DAILY NEWS
Published: Saturday, March 14, 1992
It’s high noon on a Saturday at the Arrow Wine store in Kettering. The weekly wine tasting is barely an hour old, but already folks are standing two- and three-deep around the small bar, chatting and sipping maroon-colored liquid from tiny plastic cups.
A man and woman approach hesitatingly. They’re not regulars, and they scan the throng in front of them, tentative - perhaps a tad intimidated. From behind the bar, Karen Davis spots the couple and waves them over. “C’mon, fight your way through,” she says. “Would you like to taste some wine today?”
The Breakfast Club sets another place at the table.
The Arrow Wine store on Far Hills Avenue helped pioneer the idea of public wine tastings on weekends in the Dayton area. Davis, the store’s food buyer, helped launch the store’s Saturday tastings in 1975. Judging from the growth in popularity and in the number of tastings in the area, the idea has filled a need along with a few empty glasses.
The samples cost 50 cents each, sometimes more for a taste of an expensive wine (state liquor law requires that a fee be charged). Servings of an ounce or so - along with a strict “no-seconds” policy - help ensure most people will leave the place with no more than a desire for an afternoon nap.
There is no pressure to buy, although if one of the samples caresses the right taste bud, a sale of a bottle or two - or even a case - can certainly be arranged.
Davis has kept meticulous records of each wine tasted for the last 15 years, so she can tell you - if you ask - that on April 2, 1977, you missed tasting Mateus, which sold then for $3.95 a bottle.
And some of the members of the self-professed “Breakfast Club” just might have tasted that Mateus a decade and a half ago.
The ad-hoc group of wine enthusiasts met by coming early to the drop-in, 11 a.m.-to-5 p.m. tastings. Over the years (and over a few hundred samples of wine), they eventually formed a close-knit - though not overly clubby or exclusionary - social group: The Breakfast Club.
Members share vacation pictures, cooking advice, condolences and jokes.
When Breakfast Clubber Dori Dick broke her hand, she brought her X-rays in for fellow club members to peruse. The group even receives its own mail, most recently airmail from Managua, Nicaragua, from Ross Runnells, a wine lover who joined the Peace Corps.
On this particular Saturday - Feb. 29, Leap Day - Davis chooses a wine from a California winery called Stag’s Leap. Few catch on immediately to the pun, despite Davis’ prompting. But the round of groans grows in volume with each newly arrived wine taster.
The conversation this day ranges from wine to asbestos removal, back to wine.
“Say, have you tried that Balkan Crest Cabernet yet?
“Tried it? I’m on my third case of it.”
The interest in wine locally seems to have surged in recent months, in part because of a 60 Minutes report last November that extolled the possible cardiac-health benefits of wine, especially red wine.
Saturday wine-tasting luncheons that Jay’s Restaurant launched last year recently have begun selling out several days in advance. The Wine Works wine shop in Springfield started Saturday afternoon tastings a few months ago.
At Arrow, the crowds ebb and flow, usually with the weather. Warm, sunny days keep people at home, working in yards and gardens. Rainy days pack them in at the wine bar.
Behind the bar at the Leap Day tasting, Davis is dusting off her Stag’s Leap pun for a late-arriving Breakfast Club member. Another groan.
“I should’ve stayed home and put some more dishes in the dishwasher,” the woman says.
Breakfast dishes, no doubt.
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