All In The Senses.

I am beginning a wine blog wherein I write about the wine I drink, where I drink it, and what it drinks like. Mostly, I'll be drinking Burgundy and Champagne with some Southwests thrown in every once in a while for the fun of it. My goal is to start drinking something else and experiment with new wines. But, to start, I will stick to what I know and like. I told myself that I would be drinking hearty wines for winter but it hasn't been much of a winter. I bought a bottle of Heidsieck Monopole Rose which I have never tried and I will write about that as soon as I pop it open.

Heidsieck Monopole Rose Brut:

This wine was bought at Spirits of Mt. Vernon on a whim. My roomate and I ran into each other at the Harborplace Gallery and walked back home together. The weather was like a beautiful late summer evening despite it being late January. The dense but warm wind pushed hard against us as we walked up the hills that led to the house. Buses sped past and spit dirty sooty air from behind them.

We stopped by Spirits and bought the Heidsieck and three Burgundies. I came home and photographed all of the wine. It was a bit weird for me because I am so used to photographing people and have no experience with photographing inatimate objects.

But, about the wine. Heidsieck Monopole Rose. 70% Pinot Noir. 20% Chardonnay and 10% Pinot Meunier. I don't know anything about Pinot Meunier except that it's a blending grape for Champagne. The bottle was hard to open. The cork screeched and screamed on the way out and it almost seemed that it might be flat but then it burst out with great force and the wine bubbled over the sides of the bottle. Hooray! It was good. I have a strange knack for picking out corked bottles. I am allowed to steward wine from my job. They have an exceptional wine list. (http://www.petitlouis.com/vins.html) All French and very reasonably priced.

When we open wine at a table we bring a glass to smell it first to ensure that it isn't corked. Of all the wine I've opened in the 9 months that I've worked there I've opened 2 corked bottles. And one wasn't even corked; it was just a bit off. Of the bottles of wine that I've taken home I've gotten about 15 corked bottles. I find this very strange but chalk it up to stupid luck. Someone's telling me to take it easy on the wine drinking.

But, again, about the wine. It has lovely wild strawberries on the nose. It kind of smells like unripe pineapples. It certainly has an acidic tropical fruit note. Medium mousse which I like a lot. I don't like to be overwhelmed by bubbles. It's a delicate wine and it reminds me how much I enjoy subtlety and it also reminds me how much I'm missing on this wine because my nose is a bit stuffed. It's actually kind of fun to blow my nose and then feel as the flavors slowly build and then fall.

Having come from a fridge the wine was a bit too cold at first but now it's warming up a bit. People like their white wine too cold and their red wine too warm and their champagne bordering on frozen. I just don't get it.

I'm sitting on my floor, sipping my champagne, wondering if this blog is going to be interesting enough for anyone to give a shit, wondering if I am babbling. At least the blog has a great name. It struck me all of the sudden. My, how I love Bob.

I read blogs by Eric Asimov and Fredric Koeppel and I learn things from their blogs. They have a very distinct way of combining fact and opinion to tell you something objective about wine, wine drinkers, wine producers or whatever. I don't have the knowledge yet to do that. I'm 24 and I've only been seriously drinking wine for less than a year. I only know anything about French wines and even then I know the basics. Perhaps soon I will be able to have an objective wine blog, one that isn't so silly. I was about to use the word sideways to describe the blog because I will probably beat around the vine a bit since I don't know a great deal but then I remembered that stupid movie which I didn't even see. I wish I could use that word in association with wine without feeling like a cheap, middle-aged moron with bad movie tastes.

Once, I had an idea to keep a wine blog where I rented movies and drank a wine which I thought would suit the movie I was watching. I drank a beautiful Cahors, Chateau du Cayrou 1989 and watched Carnivale. The scarlet color matched the dusty red landscape of the series to a tee. The subtle earthiness of the wine was brought out even more by the red Oklahoma sand which blew through the plains. It's funny how the tone of something visual can match the tone of a wine so perfectly. But, I guess it's all in the senses anyway.

I shall continue to drink my rose and perhaps I'll move onto the Gevery-Chambertin Marsannay I've been waiting to drink for weeks.