We have loads of wonderful gifts for your special Valentine! Sparkling wines, chocolate wines, dessert wines are great gifts, not to mention chocolate. Bath and body care items are always popular. Let us make a basket or tray to go.

The New York Gift show was long and tiring, but the weather was spectacular. There were less of the cheap Chinese-made items than at the last few shows, and more good quality, handmade textiles, baskets and jewelry from Tibet, Cambodia, Nepal, India, Africa, South and Central America, to name a few sources. Shawls and scarves are still very popular and we ordered quite a few for spring.

Body care items are still hot and we found several nice lines, including soaps from Napa, California, which make use of grape seed oil left after crushing. Organic beeswax and honey body care items are also popular.

For years we have purchased gardening items from Dorothy Biddle Service, a third generation American business with quality stock. Their “Foxglove” gardening gloves, rose stem strippers, kneelers and many other tools for the gardener will be here any day now – they make wonderful Mother’s Day gifts. One of the items on order is The Tick Key, the “easiest –to-use tick removal device on earth”, according to the manufacturers. We still have a few left from a previous order.

Our major lamp supplier has many new styles in the works and we hope to get them soon. Look for an email as soon as they arrive. We also expect a few whimsical lamps from California in a couple of weeks.

For many years we tried to find the blue and white crab pottery designed by Giuseppe Dovis who lived on the Eastern Shore. Blue Crab Bay Company, makers of fine Virginia food products, has purchased the rights to the designs and we will have pieces in the shop very soon.

Expect to find inexpensive, everyday wine glasses made in America, very soon. Wine glasses are a real problem for us as most of the European manufacturers are either closed or have moved to China, resulting in a poor quality product. I am still working hard to find a reasonably priced line of wine glasses made in the Czech Republic, but so far we are discouraged by the large quantity that we are forced to buy in order to keep the prices reasonable.

There are many new wines in stock, many in the bargain range. Our sparkling wine section has been replenished and expanded since New Year’s, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Please remember that we are always happy to take special order, but we must have some lead time as suppliers have various delivery dates.

Bellavitano Sartori continues to be among our bestselling cheeses and we try to keep all three in stock – raspberry beer washed, merlot, and cracked pepper coated.

Fish sales are good but we apologize for your recurring email problems. As I write this, we have not been able receive email through info@townduck.com, but we can send successfully. This is a problem between Comcast and our provider and we do not expect it to be resolved before the end of the week. Bibi’s email with this week’s fish offerings will include instructions for placing your orders. Once again, please accept our apologies for this inconvenience.

Speaking of fish, while we were in New York, we ate very well, including a wonderful meal at Mezzo Giorno in Soho. Bibi had the dorade, a small, white-fleshed fish, which they cook in their wood-fired oven. It was great so she offered it last week. Let us have some feedback from those who bought it! I had the PEI mussels this week-end and they were plump and very good. Bibi hesitates to offer them as we have to purchase the PEI variety in 10 pound increments. I am going to suggest she offer them this week anyway.

Annette and the gang