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.
This was a vermentino we had bought in Nice on a vacation to Provence in 2005—a beautiful Indian Summer trip at the end of October unexpectedly blessed with blue skies and high temperatures. The only day of rain had been when we were at Arles, and even then a downpour suited our walk in the mossy ancient cemetery. But Nice was perfection: We walked along the Baie des Anges that we knew principally from an old Jeanne Moreau movie. And at dinner on our first night—at the restaurant Chantecler, in the Hotel Negresco—we had our first bottle of local wine, a charming, brisk and lemony vermentino from (so our sommelier told us) the finest estate in the area. That would be Ch. de Bellet, a vineyard that didn’t bother exporting to the States.
Well, we decided,we must have this fermented souvenir! A case!
With our not very strong command of French, we drove out of town and up through small, curving roads to the chateau itself, where we met with the grand dame of the house. She was a dignified old woman with fine gray hair, a fine tailored suit and—so it seemed—no great confidence that we weren’t con men, murderers or just dumb American tourists who had alighted on her property like a couple of flies. Although she kept telling us that it was her daughter who handled sales, we agreed to buy a case of her 2003 Cuvée Baron G., promising to return after our planned driving tour of the area.
We did return a few days later, almost at dusk (hours were squandered getting lost): The chateau was dark, and a huge dog barked in warning from the yard. The moment felt ominous and existentially dire. We actually called out “Hello!” or, in a simulation of the French, “Allo!” No light was switched on, no door was opened. We were annoyed and perplexed and insulted, although if this were the States the lady of the house would probably have been concealed behind curtains with a loaded gun. Or she would have sent out her security squad.
In any event, the little convenience store down the road sold her Bellet. We bought a few bottles there and lugged them with other accumulated bottles onto the plane home (actually, we left them all in the rental car at the airport, which resulted in some panicked scrambling). Then we put our cherished baby Bellets in the warehouse. As time inched along, our bottles of Bellet gained a nostalgic glow. We imagined uncorking them, expecting the wine to transport us back to Provence and that Indian Summer.
And yet we procrastinated—I suspected we shouldn’t, that a 2003 Bellet was not a wine to be aged into 2006, 2007, 2008…. But Aldo kept saying we should put it off, mostly (I suspect) because he didn’t feel like going to get it from the warehouse. Sometimes he acts as if a walk through Chelsea is a journey across the moors.
Ah, Aldo, inestimatable travel companion, I should not have trusted you on this point.
When we finally had the Bellet last week in a rather celebratory mood—spring finally seemed to have arrived—it was no longer the Bellet. The color had taken on a tint somewhere between amber and molasses, and the wine was as dead on the palate as a sardine on a cracker. Where was Provence? The drive through the Gorge du Verdon and the flat marshes of the Camargue? Mont Ventoux? All that crisp burnishing late afternoon sun? Gone.
All we tasted was the formidable shadow of Madame de Bellet.
British writer Paul Torday’s second book was published in 2008 as The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, subtitled A Novel in Four Vintages, but the recently brought-out American edition is called simply Bordeaux. That makes the book’s wine theme more obvious, while dropping the moral and psychological mysteriousness suggested by “Irresistible.”
And who is Wilberforce? The narrator of the book, he’s a shockingly dissolute wine snob, a former software programmer who made his fortune and then retired, purchasing the estate—and the vast wine cellar—of a declining, unmarried gentleman named Francis Black. When we first meet Wilberforce, he has entered a smart London bistro where he plans to nibble on whatever he happens to order—food isn’t terribly relevant to him—while achieving a sort of vino-transcendence as he savors a rare 1982 Petrus that will cost him 3,000 pounds. Finishing the bottle, he realizes he may not soon or ever have another, and orders a second, the last in the restaurant’s cellar.
Given that he regularly consumes something on the order of five bottles in the course of a day, the Petruses—which he downs while talking to himself and chasing phantom memories that seem absolutely real to him—knock him into a temporary coma.
Wilberforce, in other words, is a walking disaster. When he comes to, his doctor warns him that he is on the verge of permanent dementia and worse. Scarcely acknowledging the doctor, Wilberforce is more disturbed that he can’t really taste wine properly anymore. He never stops thinking about wine, or his wonderful collection of bottles out at the country house.
This opening section is beautifully done, both in laying out Wilberforce’s accurate if pompous musings on vintages and tasting (Torday credits Robert Parker in a brief note), but also in its depiction of Wilberforce’s hideous, self-destructive seediness, his haughtiness, his grim sense of irony (he is much more acute than he realizes, or pretends to be with us).
The book probably isn’t meant to be a lecture on the dangers of wine mania and alcoholism, but anyone who is tempted upon emptying one bottle to uncork another might find it useful. Ask yourself: “Am I Wilberforce?”
If your reading group or wine club says yes, you have a problem.
The rest of the book is never less than readable, but it also becomes more facile as it goes: Torday tells the story in reverse, 2006 to 2002, so that by the end we have moved back to the days when Wilberforce barely drank but, sensing that a life spent at the computer was lonely and empty, stumbled on the friendship of Mr. Black and, along with him, a socially elite group that includes the woman Wilberforce will come to love. This isn’t a new trick (Harold Pinter used it in Betrayal, for one thing), and it doesn’t really resolve the enigma at the center of the book: Wilberforce’s relationship with the older Francis, who at the very least is a surrogate father but, in a way that doesn’t seem intentional, sometimes gives off an elusive, furtive sense of homosexual connection. Who is this Francis, with his vast but disorganized wine cellar (which may not be as priceless as Wilberforce thinks it is)? Is he taking advantage of Wilbeforce’s awkwardness and naivete? Is he deluded about his wine collection, as well? Why is there something sinister and manipulative about him?
A good novelist (and Torday is) isn’t required to answer any of this—he hints very strongly at one possible answer—but the intriguing obscurity of the bond between Wilberforce and Francis is much more powerful, and more tantalizingly real, than the linear (if inverse) narrative of Wilberforce’s downfall. There’s a whole other novel hidden in the labyrinth of that wine cellar.
In tribute to vigneron Didier Dagueneau, who recently died at only age 52, we decided we would have a bottle of his 2005 Blanc Fume de Pouilly—at $74, the lower end of his internationally acclaimed line.
Once upon a time, we would have been silly enough to think 52 years represented a long life. We are aware now that this is not so. We are now aware that many, many lifetimes pass while a terroir acquires its character and definition. We are Big Picture guys, Aldo and me.
And so we allowed ourselves to enjoy this man’s wine—what finer memorial can a winemaker receive?
Aldo did the uncorking an hour or so before we were to begin drinking—he likes to do the uncorking, it gives him a gratifying sense of utility and ritual—and in the interim he finished preparing a dinner designed not to compete with the flavors we anticipated in the glass. We would be having broiled striped bass, rice and a rather solemn clump of stewed greens from the farmers’ market. It sounds a little like what the villagers ate in Babette’s Feast before Babette showed up with the transfigurative glories of French cuisine. But it was apt.
Meanwhile, I was at the computer googling to learn more about the fragment of musical scoring printed on the Dagueneau label—most likely a riff on a song by French composer-singer Georges Brassens: The miracle of YouTube brought up a string of video clips of Monsieur Brassens, singing in what to my ears was a very French voice—smooth, unforced, folksy with a light sophistication. I found myself wondering aloud if there were ever a French equivalent to as stolid an American pop star as Andy Williams or Glenn Campbell.
But he is dead, too, Monsieur Brassens. And what greater memorial can a composer-singer receive than to have new listeners who, if they hadn’t picked a particular wine, might never have known he existed?
Aldo wondered aloud whether Dagueneau —who was vigorously hirsute with an unkempt beard and (in some photos) dreadlocks—looked more like Jim Henson of the Muppets or Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. (But, again, they too are dead.) The point was not meant with any disrespect—if anything, Aldo was simply acknowledging Dagueneau’s forceful iconoclastic presence in the world of wine. Of course, it will be some time until after the November elections that anyone is comfortable throwing around the word “maverick,” but he was: a biodynamic pioneer who ruthlessly curtailed yields to create wines typically described as luscious, structured, powerful, brilliant, unforgettable, on and on—a plethora of great, manly adjectives.
And the wine, yes, was all that. This sauvignon blanc nonpareil had a pale straw color flecked by hints of green. There was a strong aroma reminiscent of stone, chalk and apple. The palate had a taut but concentrated structure. A rich, acid backbone carried the lime, grapefruit and stone flavors, leading to a lingering finish, slightly cut short due to its youth. An austere wine, a delicious wine, an elegantly focused wine.
We ate the fish, finished the bottle, called it a night and were grateful that we have more bottles of Dagueneau in storage. Life goes on, and wine with it.
We had once thought we might join in the sentimental festivities of Open That Bottle Night, as recommended and advocated by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, the Wall Street Journal wine columnists. It seems like a sweet idea: Uncork a wine that you’ve been saving, one that has a special memory or association for you and however many loved ones you want to include—a special bottle that you’ve put off drinking. Then we thought about it, Aldo and I, and instead we have come up with our own night to be celebrated Feb. 23, which happens to be when John and Dottie indulge in OTBN, an acronym that makes me think of off-track betting. Or we may celebrate it Feb. 24, the same night as the Oscars. Or Feb. 22. We aren’t sentimental about the date. It’s not really material. Not when you’re launching OTCWN:
Open That Can of Worms Night.
How this came to be is that—well, the fact of the matter is that by the time Aldo and I have finished the second half of any bottle, good or bad, we tend to find ourselves in the stark, dark minutes of what Aldo refers to as the Albee Hour. “Albee,” of course, is Edward, the playwright who has such a special talent for mining the cruelty latent in the phrase in vino veritas. I mean, if you hold in your hand a lily—in other words, if you begin the evening in a good, light state of mind—a nice bottle of wine will gild the mood. But if your mental state is more like a dry, irritated weed, a bottle of wine will make it sprout like crabgrass at the height of summer. Your sour mood will deepen with an almost invigorating perversity.
If you recognize this feeling, then you are ready to celebrate Open That Can of Worms Night.
And Aldo and I are always primed! Exhausting the dinner and the wine and not at all calmed by the soft, sudsy slursh of the water in dishwasher, we will embark upon an athletic ping-pong of barbed comments, mostly of the petty accusatory sort.
“This wine isn’t sufficiently chilled.”
“Well, it’s sufficiently uncorked, isn’t it? So what are you complaining about?”
“What does that mean?”
“You know what that means –”
And we’re off! Hence the can of worms or, depending on how vigorously you partake of OTCWN, the Pandora’s box, the closet full of skeletons, the rats in the attic, the mice in the cupboard, the rattle in the carborator, the fly trying to worm its way out of the ointment.
It’s really a simpler concept than John and Dottie’s, which means in a sense that it is also more elegant, more flexible, more distilled. Because, as I mentioned, you can commence with any bottle of wine with any meal on any night and any occasion. But if you aren’t sure you have it in you to really enjoy Open That Can of Worms Night, do this: Choose an evening that follows an unusually bilious day at the office. Uncork a wine you don’t even like (or that was given to you as a gift by someone you despise) and serve with an overcooked piece of meat, an insufficiently filleted salmon, or an undistinguished dollop of goatcheese. It may be as soon as a few sips that you will sense internally the thin, firm pressure of an opener slicing into an aluminum can and that small fizzy outrush of air.
“Remember that dinner in Verona for your birthday—?”
“You’re asking me to remember three things in one sentence—dinner, Verona and birthday. What am I, a goddamn encyclopedia?!”
If you’re truly in the Albee Hour, you may want to have a second bottle and a third and have some guests over and humiliate them and then fight over your child who doesn’t really exist. That, of course, is beyond Open That Can of Worms Night. That’s closer to Open That Vein Night.
Better, though, not to get carried away, dear reader. Never go to bed angry. This is all mere sport, an exercise in venting. “Put a cork in it,” as they say, then put your head to the pillow… and dream of your next Open That Can of Worms Night. It can be in 2009. Or tomorrow.
