This is my entry from the Purple Pages 2024 Wine Writing Competition. It did not make it to the 60 entries that were published in July and August, but what good is a defunct Wine blog if you can't publish your own rejected material?
I had a great time writing this entry of my "Wine Moment I will never Forget" (the theme of this year's competition) which is actually about two wine moments, one I forgot and one I remembered, neither of which I will ever forget(again.) I frequently relate both of these stories to the lovely and curious people I meet while presenting wine at consumer tastings, usually when they tell me they don't want to taste something because they don't like it.
Also, I will say that I do find my own actual wine descriptors here a bit lacking in wine writerly detail, especially after reading the lush, visceral entries that did make it in to the Purple Pages, but I didn't (and I guess still don't) want to write the mother of all dry tasting notes. This is a memory from more than 20 years ago, and I did not have that vocabulary at that time. If you are hungry for some much better tasting notes of aged Tawnies, please check out my inaugural blog post on the Barros Colheita tasting from many years ago https://thenativegrape.blogspot.com/2011/04/7-decades-of-porto-barros.html. It hasn't aged as well as the '37 Barros Colheita, but hey, who has?
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| Selfie with Peacock at Quinta da Pacheca, Douro Valley |
“You don’t like Sauvignon
Blanc?!!” I was incredulous. Aghast. Disapproving.
My colleague (who did not
like Sauvignon Blanc) however, was unapologetic. This was a customer of mine, a
wine enthusiast and a collector. And I respected his opinion.
“Sancerre?!” I was all
unmasked exasperation.
Cold, and unconcerned his deadpan
one-word response came back, “No.”
This meant I should drop it
but drop it I didn’t. How could this be? I still wondered days later. We were,
after all at a time in our wizened wine careers when acid reigns supreme,
Riesling is extolled and cellared, single vineyard Chenin Blanc is paired and
celebrated, and Sauvignon Blanc (preferably from the Loire) drunk thirstily up.
It’s so lively and mouth-watering. So alive. So energetic and complex. So
perfectly paired with so many things, the raw oysters, the Chevre, Twelve
o’clock somewhere?
I took my disbelief to anyone
who would listen. My husband, other wine buyers, fellow wine reps in line to
taste with said buyers, my husband, then it hit me. I knew why he didn’t like
Sauvignon Blanc because… “I didn’t like Sauvignon Blanc!” Whoa!! There
it was. Shameful and long buried. When I was getting started in the wine
business, I didn’t like Sauvignon Blanc. At. All.
Sauvignon Blanc is racy and
assertive. But one man’s racy and assertive is another man’s sour and
overpowering. Distinctive, immediate and in your face expressive, it’s one of
the first varieties I was able to pick out and identify. It often tastes like
grapefruit. Do you like grapefruit? Grapefruit can be very polarizing. Herbaceous,
grassy, peppery, vegetal, those flavors can be an acquired taste. Like fish
sauce and kimchee if you didn’t grow up with them. One man’s fragrant, is
another man’s stinky.
I realized there were a lot
of wines I now loved that I had no time for when I first encountered them. Like
the first time I tried Port. I was a waitress at a casual restaurant in Austin,
TX. One of the managers organized a little staff training that ended with a
Ruby Port. Port is a fortified wine. Port is a sweet wine. Port is a lot,
especially if you are not prepared for it. And so came my first ruling,
“I don’t like Port. At.
All.”
My manager started throwing
out all the things she was tasting. Figs, raisins, tobacco. She went on and on.
Easy and enthusiastic. Like she thought this was decadent and delicious. Like
she thought this was one of the best things she ever tasted. I was pretty sure
she was making it up.
I kept this opinion about
Port straight up to the time that I was a wine buyer for a more upstream
restaurant with a lovely and large (250-300 bottle) wine list. It was at a time
right before 9/11 when the tech boom fueled dining scene in Austin was full of
new and adventurous for the time options like this one. It had a wood fired
pizza oven in the bar and a frozen Bellini machine. A lovely mural of Sienna
wrapped around a spiral staircase from the bar area to the more formal dining
area above. They were introducing Texans to Focaccia and Risotto and managing
to fetch $13 a pop for Cosmoplitans. The list had been lovingly crafted and was
full of beautiful vintages, ’97 Super Tuscans and California Meritages that had
yet to full tilt their production and hit the big box stores. Cult California
Cabs. Someone once dined hurriedly and left a third of a bottle of Maya on the table
(of course we tried it.) It was here that I was taught the three “B’s” of
Italian wine; Barolo, Brunello and Brancaia, not necessarily in that order. I
counted verticals of Ceretto Barbaresco and a mag of Dal Forno Amarone every
inventory.
And then the planes hit the
towers. When someone asked to speak to a manager, they were less likely to be
inquiring about renting out the private dining room and more likely to see if
we might be hiring. I often felt a bit like Scarlett Ohara making dresses out
of the old drapes. But the bottles remained, and I can still remember the
feeling of overseeing them in the lovely climate-controlled wine room. Quietly
resting. Totally unaware as I placed red x’s over their prices in our wine book
as it grew slimmer and slimmer.
So, the next time I tried
port, I was tasting with a rep. He pulled out a special bottle he wanted to
share. I waved him off. “I don’t like Port.” He gave me a deadpan, unapologetic
look that told me to try it. One small tasting of Dow’s 20 year Tawny Porto
later, I was on my way to experiencing the insanely delicious and complex ways
an aged Tawny Port can dazzle. The complexity, the length, the elegance, the
texture. So rich yet so alive. The flavors went on and on. I swear I’m not
making this up.
Strong flavors, like strong
personalities, are often misunderstood. Sometimes they are so loud and so seemingly
obvious that it’s easy to miss their nuances. We think we get them right away
and put them in a box. I don’t like that guy. At. All.
Some people will always keep
their distance. But I have learned over the years that if I keep pulling back the
wrapper, every time I revisit them, they will show me something else. A
different side of their personalities. Something I missed the first, second or
tenth time I encountered them. Something I eventually started to crave, like
fish sauce and Kimchee.
Hard to ignore. Sometimes
harder to love. They may not be for everyone. But for me and Dow’s 20 year
Tawny, we’ll always have Texas.
