As a natural packrat and someone prone to nostalgia, my experience with wine has been marked by a constant gnawing anxiety that I am not documenting my journey properly. My first solution was to keep important bottles, but that quickly got out of hand. Living in an urban apartment didn’t help matters. I toyed around with saving labels, but that wasn’t very fun. Tasting notes on CellarTracker were fine, but impersonal. Then I hit on a new idea in 2021 that I found immensely enjoyable and also sustainable. Seeing as it is now the end of the year, I wanted to share it with you all here.
For reasons unknown, I chose watercolor painting as my pandemic hobby. I spent the early days of COVID lockdown sublimating my world worries into little dabs of paint. This year, taking a cue from Jacques Pepin’s Menus, I put my newfound watercolor hobby to use by creating what I call my Menu Book. On each page (or two), I record a meal that I cooked, affix the label of the wine(s) that was consumed, and sometimes record other relevant tidbits (guests, music, conversation topics, etc.).
Over the course of the year, I recorded exactly 50 meals. Some were special occasion dinners, others were notable for the wine I opened, and others were typical weeknight meals that I wanted to remember for one reason or another. The cover is a beautiful Japanese rice paper print I bought from an artisan bookbinder. I tried my best to hand-bind the whole thing following a YouTube tutorial. This is my first attempt at bookbinding, so it’s a bit clumsy, but the clumsiness gives it character (at least that’s what I tell myself).
Here is a photo of the book itself and some of the entries that I thought came out nicely. I’m looking forward to continuing the tradition next year. Cheers!
1998 Francois Gaunoux Puligny-Montrachet
1982 Cordero di Montezemolo Barolo Monfalletto
2013 Pewsey Vale Museum Reserve Riesling
2020 La Garagista Field Studies Blood Root Kindle
2014 Daguenau Fume de Pouilly
2005 Michel Mailliard Mont Vernon Champagne, 2017 Lingua Franca Chardonnay Sisters, 1986 Chateau Le Gay
2016 Christian Moreau Chablis Les Clos Clos Des Hospices, 1986 Silverado Cabernet Sauvignon
1995 Giacomo Conterno Cascina Francia Barolo (I destroyed the label trying to remove it), 2015 Akutain Gran Reserva Rosado
2009 Bouchard Volnay Caillerets
1986 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon
2016 Montevertine Toscana Rosso
