It’s not often I write about wine for my blog posts. I think some of that in part is because I often view this whole enterprise as somehow apart from wine, which although a passion of mine is also my work. There’s a celebration of the diversity of my life here, the things apart from the things that pay my bills (writing certainly isn’t doing it and I’ve never actually tried monetizing my photography).
That being said, oh look there’s a new book being released soon!
I also am acutely aware of my small-pond and still rather new experience and status in the world of wine. I am only around three years into the restaurant side of what I hope to be a long career, and five years total working in and round wine. There’s an apprehension borne of that dearth of experience summarized in the sentiment of “Who am I to have a say?” on this and that. That there is an abundance of wine writing and wine blogging and wine social medias is likewise a factor. Yet another way that posts like this feel like long cries into the void, a trickle or a drop of sentiment and opinion swept up by the millions of others like it.
There’s that trivialization again. I wonder when it’s going to go away?
Do we still call it imposter syndrome?
Even now I feel that burn of wondering why I’m even writing this.
Anyway, this is a break from that, because I recently had a remarkable experience regarding a few unimaginable bottles of wine shared in company that, over the course of an evening, I at least felt a member of— someone actually worthy of their place at the table and in the conversation. A number of us went in on a bottle of 2018 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Grands Echezeaux Grand Cru. Instead of waiting on it, of lording it, of any number of other things we could have done with a bottle like that, we decided to drink it. Drinking wine, imagine! But a wine like that, a bottle whose name and weight and history all wrap in a veneer of all the things that so charm those among us drawn to wine.
Veneer is even too belittling a word. Maybe the melodrama I so regularly apply to my own life doesn’t quite fit in with this narrative. There is plenty of it naturally occurring here, of an expensive bottle shared with people more experienced in both life and wine. Not merely the price but again, that name and that history. DRC. Grands Echezeaux.
I’m a twenty-seven year old level one sommelier working at a wine bar in New Hampshire, solid 78/100 performance on the floor. I still remember my terrifying stage, relive the moment when, sitting down afterwards with a bottle of skin-contact gewurztraminer, I felt like I belonged in a world like that for the first time. Never mind that I forgot to have the label facing a guest during one bottle service, or tried to fill a glass with ice by using the glass itself as a scoop, or that that stage was the first time I had ever really been on the floor of a restaurant.
Did I mention that on my sommelier exam I forgot to give the examiner a taste pour? That I took the test at 21?
Now here I was, handling a bottle of DRC. Grands Echezeaux. 2018.
They put me in charge of opening and decanting the damn thing!
The date picked, other bottles gathered, snacks procured. I was set to work the brunch service. At 10am on the selected day I arrived to decant the bottle before settling in behind the bar at work. The decanter used was one I had brought in from home, and to think of what it was now being used for! While it does not quite remain the most stressful bottle opening of my life, older bottles and the bottles opened for my exam come to mind, it still had a different kind of gravitas. So too did the decanting, of watching this wine so many only hear of trickle out from my pouring!
The key— a quick taste for quality. Flawless, tight and young, suggesting we had been right to open it then and wait for it to develop for the tasting, nearer four in the afternoon. The bottle, the decanter covered in cheesecloth, the cork and cut foil on a coaster I had also brought from home, all went out of sight and out of mind. Brunch progress slowly, making for a not very busy experience. At an hour and half after opening I tasted the wine again. It was opening, getting there, only just.
An hour and half after that I again gave it a small taste. I promptly scared the procurer of the bottle with an all caps text about how much it had opened.
And how much it had opened!
There was a flurry of panic. Were we to miss its mark? I rebottled the wine to slow its progress, sealed the bottle up again to keep it as best we could where it was. All there was left to do was wait.
There is also deserving of mention the social aspect of a tasting like this. Six of us united for a single bottle, but in a way that diverged into a plethora of experiences and conversations. Over the course of the whole evening there were discussions of family histories, life events, cryptocurrency and economic history, of course of the wines of our lives and the wines before us. One of the most fascinating things about working with wine is the immeasurable variety of types of people attracted to it. Some come late, others, like me, early relatively in our lives. But we were all there then, for that bottle.
Not to mention the others brought, the bottles we’d saved for certain occasions or were eager to share. My contribution was a 1994 Warre’s Port, gifted to me by a friend’s father. I hoped I was doing it justice by opening it alongside the others, and especially the bottle of the evening. There were also cheeses, charcuterie, nice bread, and dried fruits. All the care of going with that bottle, the reason for our gathering.
Then, of course, we have the wine. I had the privilege, through that stress and responsibility, of watching it evolve. The pleasure too of tasting in a group and sharing our thoughts and impressions. One of the more oft-asked questions is whether a bottle like that disappoints for its price, its reputation. I do not think it did, though it exceeded them in part because it was so different than what we were expecting. The bottle drank more herbal, woody, and floral than I think any of us expected. The fruit was there, and it was dark and almost a little brooding, but what took us all by surprise and held us in awed flaw was the sanguine quality the wine held, set against a backdrop of an incense of sandalwood, cinnamon, hints of smoke, violets and menthol. It was harmonious, if youthful, structured more than any of us thought, and immaculately well crafted.
We carefully measured to make sure we all got the same amount, lamenting the loss in every spilled drop. Pouring that may have been one of the more stressful moments of my life, especially on the second round where everyone had an ounce,
More than one of us commented on how maudlin it was when the glasses ran low.
I remembered the story one of my best friends share with me, the Parable of the Broccoli Tree. And the quote therein near the end, part of its moral.
“And the truth is: if we horde and hide what we love, we can still lose it, only then we’re alone in the loss.”
So, of course, more now than the wine, we have the memories. That night, the company, the lingering memories of just what a bottle like that means. Conversations about our pasts, expansions of our world, bursts of excited fervor balanced with quiet contemplation of a thing near as old as humanity. Delicious food, sunset light, hugs and farewells brightened with the promise, the need, of doing it again.
But maybe that’s not really “more than the wine.”
Maybe that’s the reason we love wine in the first place.
There are so many bottles that will remind you of that. I’m glad I got to taste this one.