We were sharing a bottle of the 2004 Domaine Rimbert “Le Mas au Schist” over a nice, simple late-autumn supper of sausages, apples and rice. We had indulged in our usual exercise of wine anaylsis, starting with an observation of the deep purple core, then taking in the dark fruit and dusky perfume on the nose. Yet I noticed that Aldo seemed to be holding back.
I don’t mean just reticent. I mean I thought he was holding back tears.
I asked him what on earth could be troubling him when we were embarked on this tasty St. Chinian wine, and he said – after a certain amount of hemming and hawing that made my compassionate mood rather thinner than it started out to be – that he had been reading online about a famous experiment conducted with a group of wine experts:
They had been given glasses of wine, some red, some white, and asked to describe and identify them. Well, the trick was that the wines were all the same white: some had merely been reddened with vegetable dye. And yet the experts went on to describe the doctored white in classic, even hackneyed terms of red.
To me, this was not news: There have been plenty of tests in which blindfolded experts couldn’t distinguish between a white and a red. But to Aldo, this all raised terrible doubt: He seemed as sad as a child uncertain about Santa, or a saint in a dark night of the soul over the really big questions of God and heaven and so on. I have never had a dark night of the soul, fortunately. My sleep is too important to me, and usually the wine with dinner seals the deal.
I think I would say Aldo’s case was touching, in its display of vulnerability, but also annoying, in that he was entertaining doubts about me.
I know this because he said so. He didn’t say, “How do I know, Billy, that you are as genuinely expert as I have always believed? How am I to firm up my old trust in your abilities, which have, sometimes certainly, verged on genius?” He may have been thinking that, I suppose. But what he said was: “Wouldn’t it be fun, Billy, if I did that with you?”
“Did what?”
“Blindfolded you, say, and had you determine what you were drinking. It would be wine, of course. I wouldn’t try and trick you with soda or grape juice. But it would be fun.”
“What’s fun about that?”
“To see you proved right.”
“If I am going to be proved right, why waste the time? I can see perfectly well what this is about, testing your shakey faith.”
“Don’t be silly, Billy. I was baptized and confirmed and have a real shot at a Knight of Malta garter and certificate, if I write a big enough check.”
“I mean faith in me. I am not going to indulge in some sort of game, Aldo, just because you’re afraid I’m fallible. If anything, I would think you wanted to shield me from anything that might – I don’t want to say expose me, because that implies I have something to hide. And I do not.”
“Well, I do wonder now how much anyone can know. I would try this on Robert Parker, but I’d have to buy a gun and break through his damned security. Doesn’t he live in a mansion compound surrounded by a moat with piranhas and an electric fence with armed guards in turrets?”
“Yes, and why shouldn’t he? The Bordeaux assassins speak fluent English and can bluff their way past anyone. And what would it matter? Does it really matter if a person, tricked into a false position, falls back on preconceptions and memories?”
“I believe it might. Might matter.”
I determined that in future I would not let Aldo open a bottle of wine out of my sight: He knows how to make the sound of a cork popping by plucking his cheek with his finger. Who knows what he might pour me?
This was an awful blow, and I knew we would eventually overcome it, but for now Aldo’s mistrust in me had created just as much if not more mistrust in him. We continued to drink our wine, and eventually enjoyed it, and got a soft buzz from it. But the evening no longer was what it might have been.
In bed, I prayed for the safety of Robert Parker, Jancis Robinson and Kermit Lynch, then lay awake for a spell, my head percolating with anxiety. Was this a dark night of the soul? Then I fell asleep, and slept in till ten a.m.
