The best wine I ever tasted

Nearly every single time I tell anyone that I work in wine they in veritably ask "what's a good wine?"  Which to me is like asking "what's a good song?"  There is no perfect answer because it just depends on so many variables.  Time, place, what's for dinner and the like.

I've also been asked "what is the best wine you ever had?"  This one is harder for different reasons.  For starters, what does "best" really mean?

It certainly wasn't the caterer supplied mags of Chilean plonk we served at our wedding, or the perfectly acceptable cava we toasted with that was rendered almost undrinkable by serving it in early 1960's vintage Italian silver coupes.   The toast looked great for the photos, but the wine tasted of metal and acid.  Though my wife's grandmother really liked it and got fairly well lit on the stuff.

Then I think of memorable opportunities to taste rare bottles.  That 1969 Terlaner Classico, a Pinot blanc, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc blend that when I tasted it at the ripe age of 30 was still alive and vibrant, and is the only wine from my birth year I've ever had.  The 1937 Kopke Colheita that was shared by a restaurant buyer with every sales rep who came in that fine Thursday afternoon.  The 1976 Clos des Mouches that had sadly lost all its fruit to time or poor storage, yet we drank every drop that tasted like walking through a forest on a rainy afternoon.  The 1995 Gundlach Bundschu Vintage Reserve Cabernet that I drank entirely by myself one night while my wife was gone on a trip and which I liked so much I sent a long complimentary email to Jeff Bundschu to say how good it was.

But then what about wines of great pedigree?  The few vintages of a couple of the first growth Bordeaux that I had been lucky to taste.  The Chateau de Sales, a Pomerol wine from a small vineyard that is right across the street from Chateau Petrus.  The 100-point Chateau Rieussec Sauternes or the 100-year-old Pedro Ximenez Sherry.  The champagne we drank on New Year's Eve 1999 or that bottle of 1996 Bruno Rocca Rabajá Barbaresco that is hiding in my basement, though I tasted it with Bruno in his cellar.  Or any of the super Tuscan wines that were open at the party to celebrate the 10th year of Poggio al Tesoro.

For so long I tell people that one of the things that keeps you in the wine business for so many years, in addition to the people and the places and food, is that you get to taste and try so many things.  It's not a stretch to say that I've tasted tens of thousands of wines.  So, what was the "best"?

The more I think about it the more I realize there is not an answer, any more that you can say there is a "best" song.  You'll always get a disagreement.  ("Free bird is the best song ever, man!"  "Overplayed junk!")

Here's my top three.  I eliminated the white from Cinque Terre, though it was a beautiful evening overlooking the Ligurian Sea with my wife, on a rocky terrace eating the fresh fish from the waters below.  The thing is, the wines of Cinque Terre aren't really that interesting no matter how much you remember they are, or think they were.  It was really all about the place.

Number three was a bottle of the Rosso from Pietratorcia on the Island of Ischia, off the coast of Napoli.  I couldn't tell you what is was made of, and I'm not going to bother to look it up. And I don't remember the vintage.  I remember sitting on a patio that was made from the volcanic "Tufo" stones, eating bruschetta made with the most insanely ripe and delicious tomatoes in the history of the earth, with unbelievably fresh mozzarella di buffalo.  I remember the wine tasted like the island felt.  I remember I actually asked the owner of the winery how long his family had lived on Ischia and he looked at me like I was insane.  They had "always" been there.  What an American question.  It was the first time that the idea of wine reflecting the place finally made sense to me.  Wine is how you capture somewhere and transport it to another place.

Number two was the copious glasses of Manzanilla from Antonio Barbadillo that we drank in a seaside cantina.  We ate mounds of enormous shrimp and a monkfish dish with saffron that was ethereal.  The wine, the place, the food all came together as one. You could almost taste the sea in the wine, like standing on a windy beach on a sunny day.  It was the end of trip through Portugal and Spain, and was the beginning of my love of both countries' wine, food and people.

Before my wife and I started a family, she asked that we do a trip to Italy since she wouldn't be traveling much in the likely future.  I had just been on a trip that included the Ischia stop, and sadly she has not been back since we did go.  We took three weeks and saw Verona, Venice, Sienna, Florence, the aforementioned Cinque Terre, then off to Nice, St. Remy-de-Provence, trips to Avignon and Aix, before ending in Paris during the unbelievable heat wave of 2001.  We ate a lot of great food, and drank a lot of nice wines.  We visited a couple of wineries, had dinner in Montalcino, and ate way too much cheese.  We took turns writing in a journal at the end of each day, to keep track of what we did and saw.  To remind ourselves of what we liked (lemon Gelato!) and didn't (our hotel in Venice).  I guess it was a blog but those were still new.  Fun fact, in 1999 there were 23 blogs.  In 2006 there were 50 million.

So naturally you'd think my all-time wine would be an Amarone, Brunello, Super Tuscan, or even a Chateauneuf from that trip.  But the wine that pops into my mind every time I'm asked was not any of those.  We had finished up a tasting of wines at San Felice, as we were staying in their guest house in the Poggio Rosso vineyard.  We asked the young woman who showed us around where we should go for dinner.  She said we should go into the nearby village and get some groceries and make a simple pasta in the kitchen of our villa.  Then she gave us the opened bottles that we had just tasted to carry back down the long dirt drive to the house.  I made some simple pasta with fresh veg and some pecorino, and added in a splash of their Chianti Classico Riserva.  Cooking with nice wine has its advantages.

The wine that I consider the best was the simple Tuscan Chardonnay that we drank out on the patio as the sun was setting over the hills of Tuscany.  I don't remember the vintage and I don't even really remember if it had oak or not.  I remember sharing that bottle with my wife and that warm May evening, the cicadas were so loud it was almost deafening, the air was thick with the smells of the vineyards and the warm red soils.  The wine was cold, and perfect for a perfect moment.  And it was all ours.  Just like the song we danced to for our first dance at our wedding.

(“Somebody” by Depeche Mode, if you must know.)

Bordeaux made me like espresso

Somehow, I made it through college without ever drinking coffee.  I do remember actually dissolving a "no-doze" in a can of "jolt" one night while writing a paper at the very last minute.  It did three things.  It killed all the fizz; made it taste minty and altogether gross, and made me shaky and ill for more than just the next day.  The thin watery coffee that was cheap and widely available for underfunded university students held the same allure as the bitter and watery beer that was all that could be afforded.  A choice of last resort and desperation.  Somehow, I avoided the black water, yet drank more than my share of the cheap beer.My parents drank coffee after dinner, which seemed counter intuitive to me.  I couldn't imagine getting some caffeine in me right before I was supposed to go to bed.  But that was when I would routinely stay up all night anyways without any help needed.  But in all the times I'd had a lunch or dinner and coffee was offered, I always passed.Until I went to Bordeaux.  Or more specifically to Chateau Lafite.

I was a guest of the importer for a quick trip around France to wineries in Bordeaux, Languedoc-Roussillon, possibly Champagne, and Alsace.  There was no way I wouldn't take advantage of a great opportunity.  To start the trip, we were almost bumped to another flight due to mechanical issues, but that was followed up by an upgrade to first class to Atlanta.  The overnight to Paris was epic.  As in tediously long and dark and everyone fell asleep.  Except me.  I'm 6'6" and I don't really fit in a normal airplane seat.  And when the person in front of me leaned back their chair, I could no longer see the tv screen I had been watching.  So, I watched a few other passengers’ screens that were left on, though without sound since my screen wasn't in sync with theirs.  Travel is very glamorous.

By the time my quick turnaround in Paris had gotten me to Bordeaux I hadn't slept in 48 hours. But we had an appointment at Chateau Lafite and I didn't travel that far and that long to miss that.

In the parking lot of the Chateau were a half dozen or so vintage sports cars.  I don't remember what they were, I just remember someone told us that they were very rare and very expensive.  And the group of car enthusiasts was visiting the Chateau that day.  I felt a little over my head.

We walked through the vineyards; you could see the variations in the soil throughout.  The winery director told us that certain types of soil in certain areas almost always produced wine that went into the 'first wine' of the estate, others usually to the 'second wine'.  These were vines that were just a few meters from each other, yet different enough to produce profoundly different wines.

We then made it into the barrel rooms.  The wines sit for the first year in a simple room.  Stone walls, dimly lit, with a library of old bottles locked up behind an iron gate in a room off to one side.  It smelled of earth, and wine, and something hard to describe.  One of my traveling companions, who had visited before, remarked that the smell was so distinctive to this place, and was exactly as they had remembered.  The second year the barrels are moved up into what can simple be called the Cathedral of Wine.  A white stone room, circular with pillars supporting the ceiling.  The floors were stone and the smell was different, but distinctive.  It was like going to church.

We tasted the current, but unreleased, vintage in a small and clinical looking room with spit sinks built into the table.  The wines were fantastic but so hard to really appreciate in that setting.  A bit like hearing a symphony on cassette. It didn't give them the proper perspective and space.  Lunch, however, was a different thing.

The Baron, as Baron Eric de Rothschild is called, was not able to join us.  But the managing director of the winery did, and after meeting in the drawing room of the chateau, we were seated at a round table in the slightly less formal family dining room.  A small opening in the wall in the corner of the room which led to the kitchen would open, and from there the staff would retrieve our lunch to serve us.  Being in Bordeaux we had steak, perfect with the Cabernet dominate wines of the estate.  We drank more than couple of vintages, including a few that were just entering their prime after a couple of decades.  And with dessert we had the Sauternes produced at Chateau Rieussec, which is part of the Lafite empire.

After lunch we sat in the living room and were offered a taste of the Chateau's own Armagnac and Cognac.  It would be rude to refuse, and for good measure we made sure we tried them both at least once if not twice.  I think I liked the Armagnac best, but by then it was hard to tell.  This is where the espresso comes in.

We were scheduled to head into the city of Bordeaux and have a tasting to learn about the other wines of the Lafite portfolio.  Not, as I had hoped, to take a many hour-long nap and sleep off the meat and wine and brandy.  Nothing could save me.

Perhaps a little espresso?  I hesitated only a second, and while I don't remember if I even liked the coffee, I had two.  Anything for survival.  We made it through the day and even recovered enough to want a beer later that afternoon.  I had just embarked down the path of espresso.  I’ve found that I really enjoy good espresso, no doubt amplified from later working with Italians for many years.  When the day is perfect for espresso, and it seems like party to mostly cloudy and not raining seems to bring out the subtle fruitiness of well roasted, not burnt, espresso, I find it to be as nuanced and delicious as a great wine.

And I find I like to have it most mornings to kick start the day.  It’s too bad I can't have first growth Bordeaux with lunch every day too.