Alexander Waugh, in an American Conservative review of Christopher Buckley’s new memoir about his celebrated parents, Bill and Pat, mentions a stinging little father-son anecdote from Losing Mum and Pup. Christopher Buckley writes that when he sent his father a case of wine for his 75th birthday, Pup asked: “How much was this?”
“It’s a nice wine, Pup. Happy Birthday.”
“I asked you how much was it?”
“About seventy dollars a bottle.”
“Take it back. I wouldn’t enjoy it.”
Now, one might interpret this to mean that powerful old reptile objected to Christopher spending so much—but, no, clearly it was because Christopher didn’t spend enough.
Now this resonates with both Aldo and me, not because our fathers ever snubbed an offering of wine, but because it brings up a topic any wine drinker is likely to entertain at some point, or at many points: A serious wine lover, preoccupied with status and having lots of money, might be unwilling to open a bottle that costs merely $75, but what about serious wine lovers without status or pots of money? Are we mere oenophilistines? vinoposeurs? The truth is, I have some expensive bottles in storage, but the average bottle we drink with dinner is closer to $20, and I rarely review a bottle that would have met old Bill’s standards.
With wine, there is always this awful yet vague issue of price and money and value, isn’t there?
Are Aldo and I missing out on a special subliminity by not being as demanding and economically flush as Bill Buckley?
Or was Bill Buckley, a man of wit and brilliance, just kidding himself? If he’d somehow lost all his money with Bernie Madoff, forced to deplete his cellar, would he have made do with a mere Muscadet?
Well, it goes without saying a good expensive bottle of wine is almost certainly going to offer more of a drinking experience than a good cheap bottle. Wine isn’t like literature: a cheap paperback edition of Dickens isn’t going to offer any less rewards than a first edition, so long as the words are identical, and they are. Wine perhaps is more like art: If you see a Botticelli at the Uffizi, you’ll realize that the color prints you’ve grown up seeing in textbooks don’t capture its translucent beauty. But how much more beauty, if you will, can a wine deliver as you go up the price range?
Is wine maybe more like a piece of designer clothing, with increasingly subtle materials and tailoring and details? Up to a point, yes … although an expensive bottle of wine may always prove to be corked—worthless—or past its prime. Then that hoity-toity standard simply evanesces—and becomes useless.
And at what point does the palate cease to differentiate nuance? Will drinking a $200 pinot noir be markedly different from one that costs $150 or $100? Wine is a sensual melody driven by the fundamental, if you will, bass note of alcohol. You get the bass note with every bottle—but money may buy you better music. You can get Cole Porter instead of Barry Manilow. But perhaps your palate is no better than your ear—you hear “C’est Magnifique” and wonder, “Is that from Les Miz?”
I suspect I’m barely beginning to make any sense of it. Aldo has been reading this over and says he’s not sure I am making sense, period. But I’m fumbling after a larger concern here.
All right, a case in point: The other night we had an unusual and, we both agree, very recommendable California wine, Wind Gap Russian Valley Pinot Gris 2007. You’ve probably never seen a pinot gris that looks like this in the glass: a tawny, slightly occluded copper (winemakers Pamela and Pax Mahle leave the wine to macerate in its skin to produce what they call a “pinked red”). The aromatically robust nose gave off notes of peach skin, earth, baked apple and floral perfume. The broad, richly muddled palate carried flavors of pear, apricot skin, honey, guava and lychee. Aldo said the color and warm flavors made him think of the luminous jeweled quality of a Bonnard painting. “With or without the nude lady getting in and out of the tub?” I had to ask. It’s an unusual wine, especially from California. A style of wine more akin to those small, quirky winemakers from Slovenia. But at nearly $40.00, was the value of this wine diminished simply because it failed to reach a particular economic measure?
Ironically, and even sadly, if William F. Buckley were alive, that great champion of the idiosyncratic nuance simply wouldn’t consider it.
July 19, 2009
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