Breakfast is the best time for sagacity. Something about a little bone-colored mug of bottomless coffee and the promise of eggs and toast can bring out the best in a person. Maybe it's the sudden realization that you get to be alive for another day, and the symbolism of eating representing that on a very deep, visceral level. Maybe it's the emergence from sleep and the way that the magical reality can flavor a pancake. Maybe it's just that I surround myself with really smart people all the time.
I think that the greatest sages of the twentieth century will go largely unrecognized. Whereas Ginsberg and Chomsky, the Dalai Llama and the Pope, people will remember if only because they wrote down what they thought, some of the wisest people of the century chose not to write. Does that make them necessarily unwise? Of course not. It makes them exempt from recognition.
If the wise spent more time writing and less time living, they would be recognized by future generations, but they would also be less wise. Every word slapped onto paper, one of them said to me once, is an iota of smart you've lost. What he failed to realize, I think, is that writing is an essentially additive act, and that every word you write down is one you don't have to remember as hard next time.
On the other hand, I'm writing. In doing so, I'm demanding, although I hope not too loudly, recognition for my little piece of clever. Does that make me a bad person?
There's a question which has been a plague to thinkers for almost as long as there have been two thinkers.
“Well,” thinks the one who wishes he'd thought of that, “he's only doing it for the women. If I just wanted to be popular, I could think stuff like that, too. I'm doing this for nobler reasons, so I can live with the abject disapproval of my fellows. At least I'm not a bad person for wanting other people to think I'm smart.”
Meanwhile, the other thinker is thinking, “Wow! Women! This wins!”
I can't promise you which kind I am. I know that if I'm the first kind, I wish I were the second. If I am the second, I'm pretty awful at it, but I'm having a great time.
What does this have to do with a Cabernet Sauvignon?
Not a damn thing. This wine was bad. It tasted strongly of Cedar and Mold, the finish was all tannin, and the nose was fresh plastic and banana ester. Yuck. I'd rather think about thinking than think about this wine. It got spoiled through mistreatment. I ruined it. It's my fault.
Does that make me a bad person, or does being a bad person make me ruin wine?
Ponder on that. We'll grab breakfast some time and talk it over.
Showing posts with label 2000. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2000. Show all posts
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Wine 9
As I have suggested previously, although never in print and never on this journal, I am en vacant at the moment, but my excursions into my cellar have churned up a worthy subject, one which I brought with me despite the inherent dangers.
Danger? you say. Well, naturally there are dangers in attempting to bring any sort of creature comfort away from home and bring it with you, and wine is sort of the worst-case scenario. When one's particular oenological obsession involves those of extreme age, one must be doubly careful.
I feel I owe it to this journal to make every effort to keep the wines as palatable as possible. If a wine is ruined by heat, what does that prove? The only interesting outcome of proper excavation within a cellar is for the wine to have become something entirely else, whether thought good or bad, on its own merits. It is a matter of seconds for wine to be ruined in an uncontrolled climate. Please keep this in mind as you travel this summer. If you bring your wine with you, it might be ruined. Buy local wines wherever you go. It's probably Greener, too, or something. Sorry, I'll back off my vague soapbox now and move on to the subject at hand.
As I have doubtless mentioned here, Rieslings are not to be kept. They do not survive well and they are one of the wines which will almost never gain anything of value over the course of time. This wine has proved that it is part of the larger crowd. As per my usual, I do not mean to cast aspersions on the wine itself and I do not doubt that, had it been used as the manufacturer intended, it would have produced a perfectly satisfactory culinary experience. As it stands, this has become a terrible wine.
The nose still has hints of fruit, and although the pineapple which is often cried as being present and delicious in such wines is certainly not actually detectable, my first reaction (and that of four of the six tasters at this event) was the distinct note of fresh paint. I have heard that some experts and particularians can refer to this as a lacquer note, but I, having applied both substances to several surfaces, can attest to this wine having developed the former, if it ever was home to the latter.
I thought I detected an apricot or other actual fruit overtone, but general consensus was that this was more imagination than sensitivity. The nose smelled of artificially flavored pineapple-named candy or gum, but not of the actual fruit. As the site of this tasting was some hundred feet from several actual pineapple plants, we had a point of reference and knew from which we spoke.
Upon actually putting this wine in my mouth, I suddenly joined the minority third who did not make a disgusted face. As seems so often the case with these over-aged wines, the flavor was unimpressively thin and lacked any form of nuance.
However, in the first moment of tasting, before the entirety of the wine had been exposed to air and my tongue had rejected the substance as best ignored, I am sure I tasted real, actual pineapple, sweet and juicy. The sensation was impressively short-lived and died away into sour blandness almost instantly.
This Riesling was a bit of a stinker, I admit. Wines of this character are the reason I started this journal, mostly by way of warning, to be quite honest. Better wines, though, I remain confident, are yet to come.
From Vacationland, I wish you best of luck with your wines, and don't forget to throw out your old Rieslings. Don't even cook with them. I'm quite serious.
Danger? you say. Well, naturally there are dangers in attempting to bring any sort of creature comfort away from home and bring it with you, and wine is sort of the worst-case scenario. When one's particular oenological obsession involves those of extreme age, one must be doubly careful.
I feel I owe it to this journal to make every effort to keep the wines as palatable as possible. If a wine is ruined by heat, what does that prove? The only interesting outcome of proper excavation within a cellar is for the wine to have become something entirely else, whether thought good or bad, on its own merits. It is a matter of seconds for wine to be ruined in an uncontrolled climate. Please keep this in mind as you travel this summer. If you bring your wine with you, it might be ruined. Buy local wines wherever you go. It's probably Greener, too, or something. Sorry, I'll back off my vague soapbox now and move on to the subject at hand.
As I have doubtless mentioned here, Rieslings are not to be kept. They do not survive well and they are one of the wines which will almost never gain anything of value over the course of time. This wine has proved that it is part of the larger crowd. As per my usual, I do not mean to cast aspersions on the wine itself and I do not doubt that, had it been used as the manufacturer intended, it would have produced a perfectly satisfactory culinary experience. As it stands, this has become a terrible wine.
The nose still has hints of fruit, and although the pineapple which is often cried as being present and delicious in such wines is certainly not actually detectable, my first reaction (and that of four of the six tasters at this event) was the distinct note of fresh paint. I have heard that some experts and particularians can refer to this as a lacquer note, but I, having applied both substances to several surfaces, can attest to this wine having developed the former, if it ever was home to the latter.
I thought I detected an apricot or other actual fruit overtone, but general consensus was that this was more imagination than sensitivity. The nose smelled of artificially flavored pineapple-named candy or gum, but not of the actual fruit. As the site of this tasting was some hundred feet from several actual pineapple plants, we had a point of reference and knew from which we spoke.
Upon actually putting this wine in my mouth, I suddenly joined the minority third who did not make a disgusted face. As seems so often the case with these over-aged wines, the flavor was unimpressively thin and lacked any form of nuance.
However, in the first moment of tasting, before the entirety of the wine had been exposed to air and my tongue had rejected the substance as best ignored, I am sure I tasted real, actual pineapple, sweet and juicy. The sensation was impressively short-lived and died away into sour blandness almost instantly.
This Riesling was a bit of a stinker, I admit. Wines of this character are the reason I started this journal, mostly by way of warning, to be quite honest. Better wines, though, I remain confident, are yet to come.
From Vacationland, I wish you best of luck with your wines, and don't forget to throw out your old Rieslings. Don't even cook with them. I'm quite serious.
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