Oh, The People You’ll Meet! (At a Wine Trade Tasting)

Oops!... I did it again - Went to a wine trade tasting and seminar. Something I used to do, lots and lots of, when I was visible. But now, it is a rare appearance I make for these things. In any event, it stirred up memories of the kind of folks you might meet at an event like that – let’s call them prototypes of  folks who attend such events, classic exemplars:

• The know-it-all
• The late arriver
• The button-downed
• The always curious, always hungry, always thirsty.
• The odd man out
• The perpetual student
• The true believer

Let’s dig in!

The Depthless Abyss

Somewhere in time - when you remember another time - things were deeper, truer, bluer, more connected to a believable reality. But here we are, with this pitiful excuse for a genuine moment. We’ve come all this way through time, through epochs, millennia, and for this to be the current crowning glory of acceptable existence? This is a dark, but thin comedy. This is a poor replica of the future, an even poorer byproduct of the past. This is a stretch that should be wiped away, for all time. And some day, I pray it will be. This is a travesty.

I’d just opened a bottle of red wine. Lest we think it was a commentary on contemporary happenings in the world, well, you might just have been misdirected. The wine was a washout, it displayed no redeeming features. It was foul smelling, sour, rotten flavored and reeked of spray on tan and mimeograph paper. What were they thinking when they brought this one out into the open?

It had been days since I’d tasted wine, as a cold prevented me from imbibing. Standing up, it had been a bottle I snagged back in 2016 and just let it rest in the cellar. It went through a tumultuous historical period lying there in the darkness. So, I thought it was time. Little did I know, if it was time, it was of another time. Not any time that I’d like to be associated with or in. And yet, here we were.

I put it aside and disregarded it. Hoping the next time I’d have a better experience. And just like that I decided not to pick up another one, nor just yet. “Just leave it be,” a voice inside said. “This is not the time. Let it pass.” So, I did.

There are times when one cannot step into the abyss. Yes, I know it’s there. And every time I open one up, there is the possibility that it could be paradise or perdition. I’m just not ready for the gamble. Let ‘em all rest. I’ll come back later.

 

 

© written and photographed by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

wine blog +  Italian wine blog + Italy W

The Sunset Trip

It seems, more and more lately, that aging folks just can’t step away from the dais. Whether it is confined to the wine and spirits trade (and that includes those who write about it) all the way down the spectrum, to the political animals who assume that they are in charge of all of our lives. Once you turn 70, the light just doesn’t burn as brightly. I thought we were going to get a break from the gerontocracy last year, but the old ways, and the illusions about what it is we’re entitled to in this life, burned bright enough to carry them over for another cycle.

The End of the Golden Age of Wine

Wine, associated with appreciation and enjoyment and part of a cultural and culinary movement that was defined by the freewheeling social and economic post-World War II era, succumbed in America today at the age of 79. Wine was pronounced dead by Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, the Surgeon General of the United States.

“Wine was the quintessential Boomer, having risen up in a time which we will look back at as the golden age of wine,” remarked one longstanding wine lover, who was seen wiping a tear from his eye, among the crowd that formed upon hearing of wine’s demise.

Destroying Memories with Invisible Eyes

Temporarily shut in by the arrival of snow (and winter), I was remanded to a nostalgic dream space that has been annexed by an external calamity of Biblical proportions. It’s a strange land, this Gulf of America, I find myself in. At once I’m excavating images from the past to rework them for a photo project. Yet I can’t help feeling somehow, I am destroying memories. It seems that is the price of art, so I have recently been reminded, by a master in the field.

A French Gladiator on Italian Soil

A young wine friend texted me a photo of a bottle he had in his presence, a 2013 Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Pucelles. In the secondary market that wine sells for about $350 today.

In the last month I have been craving a bottle of Puligny Montrachet. I don’t know why. When I was working in Hollywood in the 1970’s, I was introduced to Puligny, and it stuck with me. I loved everything about the wine. So, when my young friend dangled that bottle in front of me, I was both salivating with desire and foaming at the mouth with envy. Alas, it was not to be. The wine was out of my reach.