Have wine caddy, will travel

Across town by bus to Italian food connoisseur Michael, whose dinner party had but two wine glasses...

Until he picked up the phone and called me.

My wine caddy is built to hold six wine glasses of virtually any size and shape: tall flutes, wide Barolos, outsized Burgundy fishbowls.

Its collapsable and padded section dividers also make nice compartments for bottles as well. On this particular occasion I was packing a bottle of Soave-type white wine called San Vincenzo from Anselmi and the deliriously wonderful Passito-di-Pantelleria, a Muscat dessert made in Sicily.

That still left room for four Spiegelau glasses, which would round out the stemware in Michael's kitchen to six. Six was a good number; no one would drink from the tumbler tonight.

I have to say that I ran for the bus with my caddy slung over my shoulder and the heavy wine bottles, still full, pressed up against the delicate glasses with no problem. It's a sturdy product I picked up from Ravenscroft, my crystal manufacturer of choice. (The reason I didn't fill the caddy with my precious Ravenscroft Hermitage glasses was not due to a lack of faith in the bag, but rather because I wanted to bring stemware that were styled more like Chianti glasses.)

As you can see in the photo of the caddy as it waits for the bus to pull up, there is a built-in retractable handle and wheels at the rear. The unit is fully mobile just as a travel bag is. What's more, not only do the interior dividers -- secured snuggly in place by velcro -- detach for cleaning, the whole bag can collapse and flatten when emptied.

Why would you ever want to break the caddy down into pieces? One reason is storage. I slip my caddy right underneath my tiny wine fridge for easy storage.

Another reason is that it does make things easier to clean after you have reloaded your caddy with the used glasses, dribbles of wine, lipstick traces and all.

Here we see my assistant the lovely Johanna demonstrating the wine caddy to our host upon our arrival.

So, is your stemware in a bad way? Just dial my number or call my name.