We already knew of Total Wine and More‘s plans to open near our neighborhood. Advocate columnist Jeff Siegel reported on this last January. The retailer officially announced Tuesday that it would open in the Best Buy shopping center at Park Lane and Central early this summer.

This will be the first Texas location for Total Wine, a large chain with 79 locations nationwide. The store carries wine, beer and spirits and features a walk-in cigar humidor.

As spring blossoms around you, are you feeling the creative itch? At Healing Hands Ministries’ 2nd annual Hearts and Hands Tablescapes Luncheon, you can let your artistic juices flow while helping raise money for a great cause.

Event Chair Jane Waters is recruiting table designers, who’ll choose a theme and design a table with elegant, creative and/or whimsical touches. The luncheon will be held Friday, May 11th at Wilshire Baptist Church, near enough to Mother’s Day to attract lots of ladies bringing their moms, grandmothers, daughters, mentors and friends.

This year’s speaker will be Charity Wallace, Director of the Women’s Initiative at the Bush Center and Senior Advisor to Mrs. Laura Bush. She’ll be introduced by LH’s Paula Davis, and the crowd will be greeted by HHM founder and executive director Janna Gardner.

Janna says the clinic’s 3,100 patients are struggling now, more than ever, as gas prices stay high and the economy remains volatile. With 2/3 of her patients being women, the health and welfare of many LH families is dramatically strengthened by this non-profit clinic offering dignity, hope, health care and compassion. Using more than 5,000 volunteer hours and the financial support of the LH community, HHM is able to reduce non-urgent ER visits and replace them with cost effective, quality healthcare. Though the clinic receives no federal funding, taxpayers save millions.

If you’d like to design a table, purchase tickets or make a donation, email Jane here. Individual tickets are $40 each and include a lunch catered by Chocolate Angel.  Donations of $100 or more will be matched by the HHM board as part of their new “100 for $100 Campaign,” up to a total of $15,000.

Tablescape viewing begins at 10am in the Community Hall, and guests will be seated for remarks at 11:30. Lunch begins at 12:30. (Shown in the photo: Paulette Padalino, Susan Brooks, Katie Mueller and Jane Stadelmann enjoying last year’s event.)

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During a #winechat discussion last week about local wine, one of the questions I got was how regional wine producers could make it easier for Americans to drink wine that wasn’t called chardonnay, cabernet, and merlot. Many regional wines are made with grapes most consumers aren’t familiar with, like blanc du bois, viognier and tempranillo; hence, they’re reluctant to try them.

My suggestion: Don’t call the wines by their varietal name, which too many wineries feel compelled to do for reasons I’ve never been able to figure out. Call them something fun or interesting or inventive.

Case in point is the El Posadero ($10, purchased, available at Central Market), a tempranillo blend that is more or less the Spanish equivalent of U.S. regional wine. It comes from a less respected region around Madrid, and not the better known tempranillo appellations of Rioja or Ribera del Duero. This means the wine starts out with an image problem, especially for U.S. consumers. Calling it El Posadero goes a long way towards fixing that. Even if you don’t know what El Posadero means (innkeeper, actually, and there’s a picture of an inn on the label), it sounds Spanish and intriguing.

And it’s a pretty nifty wine, too. The El Posadero is blended with syrah, but doesn’t have as much fruit as I thought it would (and is actually a little old-fashioned in spirit). Look for an almost spicy wine with some cherry fruit and lots of acidity — practically sour cherry tart. It needs food, like smoked chicken or beef, but that’s part of the appeal of the wine.

In our continuing irregular series of posts about new spots that technically aren’t in Lake Highlands but aren’t too far away, either, check this out…

If serving “craft” beers in the style of a European beer hall can make a bowling alley “upscale”, we’re in for a treat when Bowl & Barrel opens a 15-laner this fall at the Shops at Park Lane (behind the new Whole Foods on Greenville).

The DBJ reports SMU alums Josh Sepkowitz and Kyle Noonan are opening the alley, which will include a 3,000-square-foot restaurant and bar.

The Shops at Park Lane, located between Greenville and Central Expressway south of Park Lane, started off slowly as it came online during the beginning of the recession/real estate crunch of a few years ago, but the place is filling up nicely with Dick’s Sporting Goods, Gordon Biersch, Bailey’s Prime, Grimaldi’s, Old Navy and Saks Off 5th. Bloomingdale’s, The Outlet Store opens in the center May 3.

My wife and I stopped by the center a few Friday nights ago, intending to check out the new Grimaldi’s pizza restaurant, since the West Village version often is too packed to get into. I guess plenty of other people had the same idea, because there was a 40-minute wait, so we ambled down to Gordon Biersch instead.

For Dallas, the center is a pretty walkable place; there are some benches outside on the internal street and a couple of patios off of restaurants, so it’s possible to squint and imagine you’re enjoying a real cosmopolitan experience.

As I recall, original plans for the center included a bowling alley in space where the Home Goods store is located; I believe the Bowl & Barrel is taking some of the remaining space intended for the original alley.

Click to enlarge contest flyer.

Enchiladas Restaurant,7050 Greenville, is hosting a Cinco de Mayo “enchilada eatin’ contest”.

The $10 entry fee benefits Lake Highlands High School. Entries are limited, so if you wish to get in on this, get your name, phone number and email address to Nick at Enchiladas by April 21 by email — nick@enchiladasrestaurtants.com or 214.363.8969. An optional practice contest will be held deadline day, April 21, at 1 p.m.

For the real deal, all contestants must report to the restaurant by 12:15 p.m. May 5.

If you plan to enter, let me know at chughes@advocatemag.com. We’d love to follow your journey to enchilada-eating glory.

There are a couple of importers whose wines are so trustworthy that I will buy them regardless of what’s in the bottle. Kermit Lynch, of course, for French wine, and Ole Imports and Patrick Mata for Spanish wine.

Mata’s passion for Spanish wine is famous, and his palate is exceptional. Which is why I trust Ole implicitly. Otherwise, a wine like the Zestos would raise all sorts of red flags. It’s a white wine from a region in Spain best known for red wine, and the red wine doesn’t have all that great a reputation. Its color is different, sort of off-yellow, and it’s made with a grape, the malvar, that is obscure even for those of us who appreciate obscure. Malvar, grown only in that part of Spain, is not even listed in the incredibly comprehensive Winegrape Glossary.

My faith, not surprisingly, was rewarded. The Zestos ($10, purchased, available at Central Market) is unique, though it had some similarity to the Gascon wines I like, including a little white grapiness. It is simple, but definitely Spanish in style — less fruit than the Gascon wines (some lemon, maybe) with a stone fruit pit kind of finish. One tasting note described the finish as bitter almonds, and that works, too.

Drink this chilled on its own or with a any week night dinner that calls for white wine. It’s a candidate for the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame, and is highly recommended. Just don’t expect it to taste like something you’ve tried before.

Sandwich kiosk at Central Park entrance

So there was a lot of discussion here last week about the wisdom of adding commercial development in and around White Rock Lake, and some of the comments had to do with whether restaurants and shops built at the lake could, or should, be reminiscent of development in New York City’s Central Park.

Both are urban parks, both are gathering places for an entire city, and both are largely non-commercial. Still, if you compare Central Park — with its various restaurants and shops, both on the fringe of the park and inside — with the current lack of anything commercial at White Rock Lake, Central Park looks like a veritable NorthPark in comparison.

Maybe this is a good thing, maybe it’s not: Clearly from following the blog discussion, our thoughts are split on the idea. So I thought it would be useful to look at some pictures of Central Park development and try to imagine how these projects might look here at White Rock Lake. I called former DMNer Steve Kenny, my one-time Northwestern University roommate who now works for the New York Times, and asked him to send me some photos with his new iPhone from Central Park.

Today was both an off-day for Kenny and, judging from the photos, a beautiful day in New York, so my inbox was filled with photos.

Take a look at these Central Park shops, then close your eyes and imagine something like them at White Rock Lake. Then open your eyes and start typing your thoughts here.

No doubt about – Exchange Club members in Lake Highlands know how to throw a party. Their annual Casino Night and Auction, to be held this Saturday night at Park Lane Ranch, has been months in the planning, and there’ll be dancing, dice, dinner and drinks to raise money for charities for youth and families.

Attendees can choose to play blackjack, poker, craps, slot machines, roulette and Texas Hold ‘Em with the “funny money” they’re given at the door. Donated items will be available for silent auction, and one-of-a-kind offerings will be up for live bidding.

Proceeds will benefit Healing Hands Ministries, the Child Abuse Prevention Center of Dallas and other Exchange Club projects, and will fund college scholarships for Lake Highlands High School graduates. ECLH has given more than $1 million in scholarships to date.

Tickets are $40 at the door or can be purchased via email here. The event begins at 6pm.

It’s not easy finding cheap cabernet sauvignon that tastes like cabernet sauvignon. Too many of them are fruity and sticky, without the heft and tannins that cabernet is supposed to have — call them cabernet lite. Or, if they taste like cabernet, they cost at least $20, and that’s not the point of what we do here.

How rare are these wines? I have only written about a half dozen or so cabernets in this space in the past year — hardly a proportion that compares to cabernet’s popularity. It’s the most sold red wine, and second overall in popularity to chardonnay.

The other irony? That many cabernets that do are well made and inexpensive are produced by the huge mutinationals that get so much criticism from the wine world, like the Columbia-Crest that appeared here in February. The Edna Valley ($15, sample, widely available), part of the E&J Gallo empire, fits into the same mold. In this, it’s another reminder that tasting the wine is always a good thing to do before deciding if you like it — something, sadly, that even I ometimes forget.

The Edna Valley is top notch inexpensive California cabernet. It’s less fruity than similar wines, even though it’s from Paso Robles, where fruity is part of the winemaking style. Still, there is a nice a dose of what may be boysenberry, as well as almost silky tannins and a chalky, grippy finish. Given those adjectives, you can probably tell that I really liked the finish. Serve this with red meat, especially as the weather warms up and it’s backyard barbecue time.