GUD BLOG: SINGLE POST
Wednesday
Wednesdays aren’t for serious drinking. That’s what they tell me, anyhow.
Wednesdays are for watching forensic dramas. They’re for anxiously anticipating Friday. They’re for wanting to beat the crap out of an office mate. They’re for nervous breakdowns, early bedtimes, and doing laundry.
Wonderful, wonderful Wednesdays. Replete with routine.
Enter: a special bottle of wine. Most people pull out a special bottle of wine for a special occasion. But the power of a special bottle can elevate any occasion. That may appear trite and too full of wine snob whimsy for most, but to those who have had a revelatory moment or two with a glass of wine know what I’m talking about. A friend recently quoted the wine blog, Saignée, “Anyone who knows the initial experience of finding a wine that sticks with them knows the feeling of looking down into the glass in amazement that something could taste so good. The pleasure of the moment is impossible to describe to someone who has never experienced it.”
Looking down into the glass can be quite an event. It can be such an event, in fact, that it can make you throw aside your Wednesday laundry plans and clutch your wine stem for hours.
I’d be exagg
erating if I said tonight’s choice was such a rare, ethereal bottle as to qualify as one of my absolute most memorable wine moments. But it has nonetheless lent a bit of excitement to an otherwise indistinguishable Wednesday evening.
We opened a 1999 Chateauneuf-du-Pape from Chateau du Mourre du Tendre for no other reason than I happened to see it lying in a local wine shop and my wife likes Chateauneuf. How could I lose with an unfiltered wine from Peter Weygandt, a generally reputable importer?
Ripe with raspberries and piquant with peppercorn, the aroma gave me the false impression that this was at its peak. It didn’t take more than a sip to see that there was a ton of size and structure to this wine and that it’s got years ahead of it. If anything, I’d worry that the fruit may fade long before the massive tannins. Besides the bracing acid and fruit skin astringency, there’s a lot of earthy, fungal flavor riding underneath the sharper notes. My first thought when I first opened it was that the nose, palate, and red brick color seemed closer to the last Cote-Rotie and the last Cornas I consumed (two weeks and two months ago, respectively) than anything else.
I’m having fun sipping through this bottle. A lot of fun. And now I get to write about it. Who says Wednesdays are only for bad television and household chores? It may take some excess funds, some giving friends, or some good fortune, but repeatedly casting my nose into a glass of wine that’s elegant far beyond its massive size is about as good an evening as I can fathom.
Wonderful, wonderful Wednesdays indeed.
2010.04.14 Evan Hansen at 11:30 pm
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One Response to Wednesday
Saturdays aren't so bad, either!