Earlier, the night before, we sat at a table on the top floor of a building downtown, overlooking the Pacific ocean, eating salmon and drinking French Chablis. Or rather I was. My friend had eaten before I got off the plane. He was content to watch me while sipping on a cocktail, something with bourbon, an Old Fashioned or Manhattan. I’m bad at remembering that sort of thing.
I’d really wanted a Puligny Montrachet, my guilty indulgence. But I don’t think they had one by the glass, and if they did, it would have probably been $50 for three ounces, or something to that effect. So, Chablis it was. I thought to myself, “I’m in California, I really should me drinking California wine, shouldn’t I?” I would tomorrow, with my friends wife.
But the bike ride.
Fifty plus years later, I’m time traveling, riding another borrowed bike in and out of the alleys and main streets of Coronado Island. The beachfront, by the Hotel Del. And around the island. The sun had popped out and tourists were coming out of their shells and suites. Inside the hotel, Christmas music was still playing, the tree was still displaying. The nearby wafting aroma of olive oil and grilled shrimp coming from a kitchen.
Outside, the saltiness of the ocean waves pounding the shores, a few brave surfers vying for the ninth wave. It was breezy, especially on the bike going 15 mph. I was short sleeved. It was brisk. It was exhilarating. I felt like a kid again, with my best pal, riding our bikes around the neighborhood. In fact, his neighborhood.
Later the next day, my friend's wife got back from a retreat. She was parched from the trip. My friend went out to get her favorite bottle of wine. I thought I heard the word Rombauer.
Indeed, when he returned, it was with a bottle of their Chardonnay. Oh, the history of that wine in my past. My colleague at the time, Guy Stout, was in charge of California wine in our company (I was in charge of Italian wine, in case anyone wondered). He'd just brought back a new wine from Napa, from a character named Koerner Rombauer. A retired Braniff pilot, and a bigger than life character, just the type that Guy was drawn to. And they were starting to make wine.
Well, when we saw that blue label, a couple of us around the table sighed and made fun of Guy. “Guy don’t you know blue labels are the kiss of death for wine?” we muttered. We mocked. We cajoled. But Guy was unbent. He had an inkling that this was gonna get big. And sure enough, boy did it ever.
My friend poured his wife a glass and asked me if I wanted any. “Sure, I’ll take a splash.” I knew what the wine was purported to be. In Texas lore, Rombauer Chardonnay was once in the middle of a political scandal, as a top ranking official, years ago, always had a bottle on the table of a restaurant in Austin when he went there to meet, not his wife, but his lover. Funny to think of the wine in that context, but that’s the odd thing about memory.
I took a sip. It was drier than I’d remembered it to typically be in the past, when I was paying attention to such things. It also smelled a little like a dry Moscato, without the acidity. Another memory pops up, this time on another island, Pantelleria, in the summer of 2001, drinking dry Sicilian Moscato and weaving through the grief of losing my wife months before.
The snob in me would have said to myself, “Good lord, man, last night you were drinking Chablis from France, and now look at ye!” But what I would have missed out on if I had been so set in my ways, so staid. Instead, I was flooded with memories galore.
And it hadn’t even started raining outside again.
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