The Buzz: This Week in Buffalo

Wines, Whines, and a Free Shrimp Cocktail

Mary Kunz Goldman is known around town for The Buzz, a long-running weekly column in The Buffalo News, and for other hit features, including the adventurous series 100 Things Every Western New Yorker Should Do At Least Once. She brought back the Buzz column six weeks ago. Please subscribe — it’s free! — and pass this column around to keep it rolling!

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“Save the Wine-Os”

— Sign at the Black Rhino exhibit at the Buffalo Zoo’s Wines in the Wild

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Hunting the Wild Krupnik

Handlebar Whiskey dispenses the Krupnik. Photo by the Author.

Wines in the Wild, Wednesday at the Buffalo Zoo, will linger in our memory. Crowds of Buffalonians paraded proudly with plastic souvenir wine glasses in hand. We stopped at Weis Vineyards, where a gentleman in a “Zum Wohl” T-shirt poured German wine like it was liquid gold, precisely two sips per glass. Then moved on to Usonia Wine, near the lions, where pours were more generous. At Old Scotland Road Distillery, near Rainforest Falls, we tasted a Krupnik like liquid gold — rich, sweet, bathed in cinnamon, like a dessert. Plus, it was poured by a man who looked just like the logo honoring their brand Handlebar Whiskey. Question we didn’t think to ask: Is he the proprietor? Or is that just the company dress code?

Wildlife of the Rich and Famous

Tiberius at the Buffalo Zoo’s Wines in the Wild. Photo by the Author.

Wine glass in one hand, phone in the other, Buzz attempted to photograph the awe-inspiring sight of Tiberius, the Buffalo Zoo’s regal chief lion, just inches away. “You can’t capture it,” we heard a stranger sigh, and we agreed, and put away the camera. You know who could have captured it? Our former colleague, legendary Buffalo News reporter Mike Beebe. Beebe’s Facebook page is a full-on wildlife documentary. A toad mid-meal. Twin woodpecker chicks smiling from a tree trunk. A blackbird picking ticks off a deer. And — a snapping turtle laying eggs! Forest Lawn’s turtles plop into the pond the moment Buzz gets within 300 feet. How does Beebe do it? Wait, don’t tell us: Slow and steady steals the shot. That, and we bet he’s not holding a wine glass.

High Notes, High Stress

Singing in the big leagues at Our Lady of Victory Basilica — Buzz dead center. Photo courtesy of the St. John Paul II Schola Cantorum.

Sunday was a day we will never forget — the day we sang at Our Lady of Victory with the St. John Paul II Schola Cantorum. Our dilemma: Do we, or do we not, tote our water bottle up into the sanctuary? What if we tripped over it? Worse, what if we forgot it, and the priest at the 4:30 Mass tripped over it? Long story short, we left it in the pew. And halfway through Palestrina’s “Regina Coeli,” we ran out of voice. Just hit a wall. Darn, we knew this piece. Why couldn’t this have happened during a chant we were still faking? St. Anthony, can you find our voice? The more we sing, the more we admire those who make it look easy.

The Buzz

Tasting Krupnik at Wines in the Wild, we raised a glass to Father Czeslaw Krysa, whom Buffalo lost recently. Once, when he was interviewed by Buffalo News food critic Andrew Galarneau, the headline dubbed this dear priest “King of Krupnik.” Continuing on our zoo rounds, we raised another glass to Irish Classical Theatre’s Vince O’Neill. What great gentlemen. Buffalo is the better for having known both of them. … Spotted in Delaware Park, a tulip tree — and yes, it was covered in tulips. Walt Whitman called it “the Apollo of the Woods.” We agree! …. Celebrity Watch: Last Friday, Lounge Academy played host to chanteuse Susan Peters, jazz legend Peggy Farrell, and poet Joseph Dinki. Who will turn up this week? You will — to see who’s there!

Further Reading

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