Although the city is preparing to get dumped with nearly two feet of snow this weekend—it’s never too cold for ice cream.
“It’s good for the soul,” says David Alima, co-owner of The Charmery. “It’s kind of like a ‘screw you’ to winter. We don’t care how cold it is, we’re going to eat it anyway.”
In keeping with this philosophy, The Charmery is teaming up with longtime friends from Boonville, CA-based Foursight Wines to host a special “Winemaker’s Sundae” event on Jan. 24 from 3-10 p.m, fusing the shop’s specialty flavors with the winery’s boozy varieties.
Alima says that he and his wife Laura first met Joe Webb and Kristy Charles, the husband-and-wife duo behind Foursight, when they lived in Northern California for five years before moving to Baltimore.
“We all became like a weekend family,” David says. “We would drive around wine country together to taste at different wineries around Napa and Sonoma. When they decided to start their own winery and we were trying to open The Charmery, it was really great to see another small business in action.”
To celebrate Webb and Charles’s first visit to Charm City, the Hampden shop will serve up a specialty sundae layering scoops of Jasmine Green Tea ice cream with Foursight-infused Pinot Noir sauce and Belgian waffles made with Anderson Valley Brewing’s bourbon barrel stout. (Anderson Valley just so happens to be Foursight’s next-door neighbor in Boonville.) The Charmery is also whipping up a Foursight Harvest Semillon flavor with hints of honey and apricot, which will be featured on the shop’s rotating menu.
Besides putting his friends to work behind the counter this Sunday, David says he’s most excited to share the results of yet another collaborative project with the community.
“These specialty pairings are how we keep things fun,” he says, citing previous pop-ups with Dan Deacon and Union Craft Brewing. “Baltimore is so chock-full of talented people and we want to work with all of them. We love the limitlessness of ice cream.”