The Bottle that Turned Me
Passion for wine, unsurprisingly, begins with a bottle. Much like we all remember our first love, we all remember the bottle of wine that truly changed our perception of the beverage. Also like romance, a great bottle can strike at any time. Growing up in Northern California, wine had always been around me, and my first adventures in drinking involved Charles Shaw. Yet, it was years before it became my beverage of choice. In college, I drank mostly beer, and then moved on to the macho allure of Kentucky Bourbon. Still, my work in the restaurant industry maintained a relationship with wine, and my love of beverages in general meant I had a (very) basic understanding of it’s history and importance in the world of fermenting and distilling. Last summer I was lucky enough to begin working at a beautiful new farm-to-table restaurant with a serious wine program. Although located in the famously laid back town of Woodstock, NY, Silvia was anything but relaxed. Every shift involved an intricate and in depth pre-shift, where we tasted new menu items, discussed the geographic origins of the meats and cheeses, and, occasionally, had wine classes. The director of their wine program is Sommelier Alison Berlin, a firm believer that wine begins with the grape and terroir. Her expertise, although at first intimidating, also offered a berth of knowledge. Alison discussed wine in a way I previously thought reserved for music or literature; that unique blend of curiosity, knowledge, and reverence. Alison’s classes were primarily meant to educate the staff to help improve sales. We were not expected to understand carbonic maceration or memorize sub-appelations, but it would no doubt be helpful to understand the power of location on wine and some of the key points when discussing popular and often misunderstood wines, such as Riesling. One of Alison’s biggest focuses was the importance of terroir (a difficult to translate word that basically comprises all of the natural factors affecting a grape: the soil, the sunlight, the weather) on a wine. To illustrate this we tasted two bottles of Cabernet Franc, one from Chinon in the Loire, and another made from grapes grown in the Santa Cruz mountains of California. At this point it should be noted that I grew up in the Bay Area, and throughout high school and college somehow managed to spend significant time in almost all of California’s major wine regions, including Santa Cruz. I should perhaps also mention that my dad grew up in Sonoma County, and I spent many weekends at Grandma’s house in Santa Rosa. My ties to the region and California as a whole are not insignificant, and I consider the entire state worthy of the word ‘home’. We tasted the Chinon first. It was explained that it was an ‘old-world’ style (basically meaning it was from Europe), and we were given a chance to express any thoughts we had about the aroma or taste. Frankly, I don’t remember much about that wine at all. Part of this is due to arrogance, I definitely was convinced any future I had in beverage would be through whiskey. Part of this is also due to the fact that I don’t think it was a very interesting wine. Delicious and drinkable, I’m sure, and probably doing exactly what Alison intended it to do. At the time, not something I would think too much about. We dumped our glasses and Alison began to pour the second bottle. It had a very Californian label, a stark white with a line drawing of coastal mountains and a sans-serif font reading METHODE SAUVAGE. It was explained that the wine maker, Chad Hinds, was bringing Cab Franc clones from France and planting them in various regions across California to explore the affects of terroir on the grape. I smelled the wine, and was immediately intrigued. It smelled dirty, musky, and wet, what Alison would call ‘Forest Floor’. We sipped, and the dirty feeling continued, but also gave way to dark fruits and spices. It was the aftertaste, the finish, that truly floored me. The flavor was a blend of black cherry and what my friend Lindsey called “Savory marzipan,” and for a moment, an extremely clear moment, I felt like I was 3,000 miles away in my late grandmother’s condominium. My grandmother never served me marzipan, or kept cherries around the house. The flavors I associate with her are fried chicken, roast beef, and Kraft grilled cheese. She also wasn’t a wine aficionado. Although it was her drink of choice, she wasn’t in a financial position to be purchasing the finer side of the Dry Creek Road. She also never expressed any sort of affection for Santa Cruz, about 130 miles south of her. In fact, I have a feeling she probably had disdain for the place. So why the fuck did this wine make me feel closer to her than I had since her funeral? I still have no idea, and I probably never will, since that wine is gone and will never be produced again. It was a similar experience to the smell of sandalwood reminding me of the summer of 2015, commuting to San Francisco and an ex-girlfriend. Similar to the way the smell of wet carpet and fake pine reminding me of driving through the backroads of Vermont in my old truck. Similar to how I can’t listen to the Chili Peppers without thinking of California or the Strokes and New York. From all that, I know that it was not just an emotional experience but a sensory one. Addicting is the wrong word. The feeling should be sought after. That sort of connection between body, spirit, and nature is difficult to find but highly rewarding, which is why we still create anything. I thought I had loved whiskey, but it had never offered that sort of experience, not to me. I was also lucky to be working in a generous restaurant. What could’ve been a memorable experience quickly became a reasonable hobby, as the following week I was sent to a natural wine tasting in my then residence of Hudson, NY. Each wine I smelled that felt similar to the Methode Sauvage sparked an adrenaline rush. “Is this it?” I would think. As it turned out, none of the wines I tasted that day stuck with me in quite the same way, although many of them were delicious and offered other, smaller pleasures. I became hooked, and begin studying and drinking wine regularly. Since that time I have had a few bottles that left me moved or stunned, though in different ways, broadening my understanding of the abilities of wine. What I hope to achieve with this blog is a sort of public diary, allowing for musings and reflections, a part of the broader conversation on the importance of wine.