A toast to love and a nice Rhone
Do you remember the champagne with which you toasted your wedding vows? Chances are you do.
What about the wine on the table the night your sweetheart asked you to marry him, or the bottle that arrived with your promotion? The magnum your parents sent on the birth of your first child?
Wine is woven into the great moments of life for many of us, and the selection of a notable wine, a wine that will mellow in memory with sentimental celebrations year after year, is a matter I feel needs to come off the pedestal of wine list rankings and back to the table. The place you gather with friends and family to enjoy simple and delicious food, or sit, knees touching, to make the significant choices of your life or lazily while away the quiet evenings of the summer. While a critic’s ranking can give you the particulars of a good or bad year and help you hedge a bet on an expensive bottle you’re not familiar with, taste remains a matter of personal opinion. The right wine for you is the wine you like.
Let me tell you a story of wine and love, back when my husband and I were young. The approach of Valentine’s Day had sent me in search of true character – strength, sun-filled, with vibrant depth of color and a nose redolent of flowers, herbs and spices – the French Rhone. The deep, fiery pomegranate-colored wine Napoleon was said to have romanced all forgiveness from Empress Josephine.
I felt comradeship with Napoleon, and definitely in need of forgiveness. I had errantly suggested to my spouse that we un-stress “Hell Week” – the one-two-three punch of Valentine’s Day followed by our anniversary and my husband’s birthday. Why not, I suggested rationally, combine the three celebrations into one?
Thus I learned, as Napoleon must have when Josephine’s heel hit his head, that you cannot separate a spouse from their birthday, or their need for extravagant romance. So I set out for the perfect Rhone wine that would say “forgive me.”
Larousse’s 1994 Encyclopedia of Wine in hand and buoyed by my own travels and menu notations, I hunted the perfect grape. According to Larousse, the vine stock of the Rhone Valley was said to have been brought to the region 2400 years ago by Phoenician Greeks, married to the deep purple Syrah grape planted by the Persians, and successfully cultivated throughout France by the Romans.
The Rhone River Valley – the grand sweep of a river born in the geologic drama of the northern Swiss Alps – carves southward through the massive volcanic rock formation of the Massif Central. Vienne to Valence, terraced hillside vineyards cling to the mountainsides, whereas south of Montelimar, the Rhone widens over sandstone and silt moraine left by retreating prehistoric ice flows and the climate becomes more Mediterranean, although frequently buffeted by cold mistral winds rising off the Massif Central.
As the river flows toward southern Avignon, the spicy, deep berry reds of Syrah, and crisp, aromatic whites of the Viognier grape grown in the north give way to sturdy Marsanne and delicate Roussanne grapes, the reds leaning on lighter, sweeter blends of Grenache grape often bolstered by infusions of hearty red from their northern Rhone cousins.
My offering would be a noble one. A lush Hermitage of northern Rhone aged in light oak to accompany my Valentine menu of grilled spring lamb with asparagus tips and garlic-roasted potatoes. Larousse seconded my choice, noting the dark, peppery fruited reds of Hermitage achieved royal recognition in the latter half of the 17th Century, when Louis IV made a present of the wine to his cousin Charles II in England. I like to imagine bad boy Napoleon toasted Josephine with the great crus of Hermitage on his way to prison on the Isle d’Alba. Nothing says I love you like a Rhone.
Next, seeking redemption, I paired the Marcel Guigal Hermitage with a southern Rhone – a Chateauneuf from Clos du Pape. I set out the pair of crystal goblets recovered at sea after the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania, a treasure we discovered in a small Cape Cod antiques shop on our third anniversary living in Boston. And finally, forgiveness in hand, I turned to celebration – of the husband himself and the day I married him. This called for Barolo.
Falling in love with a wine is a bit like falling in love with art. Or classic cars. For that matter, partnering with an agreeable wine can be as complex and sensuous as love itself. My husband romanced me through the dark nights of a Spokane winter with a Northern Italian Barolo from the Piedmont district, a Cantine Villadoria Barolo, Riserva 1980. A beautiful red with hints of violets, dark chocolate, autumn smoke. We were tucked into an intimate Italian trattoria, the snow falling gently outside over the lampposts, and the world softened into the nuances of the Barolo’s deep garnet color as we sipped the mouthfilling fruit flavors, largely blackberry and raspberry. The Nebbiolo grape that parented this Barolo grew near Nebbiola d’Alba and carried the hint of wood from the barrique (cask) it was aged in before bottling at Villadoria. Some Barolos are left to age, sometimes for as long as 20 years; others, largely developed after the 1970s, are blends created to be drunk younger, and are often marriages of Dolcetto and Barbera grapes with the Nebbiolo, all harvested in the sunny grape-growing regions of Piedmont. Select Barolos are destined to be quite grand, while others stride out as savory vino da tavola, or table wine, blended to accompany the delicious pastas any of us might serve up on a Tuesday night.
I liked to think of that Barolo, and the sentimental way my husband signed his love notes thereafter as “Barolo,” as the signature of a grand romance. That Italian red joins the St. Michelle Sauterne in our story, a sweet wine brought back from a visit to the St. Michelle cellars and drunk even as my lovely man enumerated all the many reasons he would not be good for me. And these wines are equaled in memory by a Fourth of July champagne with hints of apricot and pear from Domaine Chandon, la grand famille dancing in the Napa Valley vineyard gardens to a Louisiana Zydeco band in celebration of my daughter’s tenth birthday.
It has been a few years since that sweetheart of mine passed away. But on every Valentine’s Day I open a big-hearted Rhone. Napoleon knew a thing or two.