My favorite wine memory...

 

I had the good fortune of living for nearly two years in a small village near Bordeaux that lived by wine. A few ambitious souls bottled their own wine, a large cooperative made honest bulk wine, and a few anachronistic souls crushed enough grapes in their basements for their everyday drinking.

One day I persuaded ancient Monsieur Beylot to let me sample in his cobwebbed cellar. I felt as though I were stepping back into the 19th century: this, I was certain, would be the real thing, wine the way it used to be, honest and true.

He drew a sample, filled two thick, grimy glasses, knocked his back and sighed with pleasure. I took my turn: sharp aromas of earth and vinegar; a searing sensation on the palate; a faint aftertaste of cherries and mud. I choked, smiled, thanked him. How could he drink this stuff everyday?

I loved Monsieur Beylot, but tasting his wine made me realize that authenticity is not a guarantee of quality. Modernity is no crime when it aims at improvement, and tradition is no virtue when it perpetuates flaws.

I learned to focus on what’s in the glass and trust what I liked. I think that’s the ultimate goal for a wine-taster.

 

 

My wife and I were visiting France in 1985, when the dollar was strong and luxury items that would have been beyond our means were actually affordable.

We splurged on great wines wherever we could. At Georges Blanc, a three-star restaurant, we drank a bottle of Jadot Corton Pougets 1969.

I had consumed many bottles of "name" Burgundy before, but this one had a magic about it -- it had the ability of magnificent Burgundies to balance enormous flavor and seductive texture on the head of a pin. Each sip explained why those Burgundy lovers I had known got faraway looks in their eyes when they talked about great bottles.

I became a convert to red Burgundy and Pinot Noir.

 

 

Some wine aficionados feel that you shouldn’t serve your best wines to a novice, “He won't understand the subtlety of a great wine, so why bother?”

I was lucky to have a mentor who did just the opposite.

When I was 16 or 17, my high school teacher would invite me for dinner a few times a year and dip into his cellar, which was stocked with great red Burgundies from top vintages. He'd start with a premier cru, then move up to a grand cru, and then to another grand cru from a better vintage.

I fell in love with the complexity of wine -- and discovered that wine could smell of rose petals, violets, blackberries and raspberries. Despite all the great wines I've been fortunate to taste since then, these wines remain my fondest memories.

 

 

One event that sticks in my mind was in the mid-1980s when the former owner of the Burgundy house of Bouchard Pere & Fils, the late Claude Bouchard, invited me to lunch in Beaune.

We drank a bottle of 1865 La Romanee with the priest of the village whose family owned part of the vineyard. The wine was black in color and rich and fresh like a wine with only a few years of age. It was wonderfully silky with intense mineral and berry character.

I almost felt like getting down on my knees and praying, although I’m not sure how the canon would have appreciated that! I still have the bottle on the fireplace mantel of our kitchen in Tuscany.

 

 

On vacation in Bordeaux, a friend and I were browsing in a small wine shop in St. Emilion, recalling the wineries and winemakers we’d visited as we came across their wines.

We both stopped short in front of the glass-in display case; it contained a bottle of 1947 Cheval Blanc, the fabled wine that most people only read about. The price was beyond our means, but...

We asked the shopkeeper and his son, who also worked in the store, whether they had ever tasted the wine. After they answered no, we struck a deal. We’d pay half the price and open the bottle right then and there and share the wine.

The wine was spectacular – and it wasn’t long before word got out and a few neighboring wine merchants arrived gingerly carrying rare bottles from their own stores.

We shared, they shared; it was an amazing experience, a lovely afternoon.