I’ve seen a few posts around the first Eureka moment with wine; that moment where the angels congregate and sing in unison the praises of vintage, farming, winemaking and time while one becomes heady with the sheer grace of that magic bottle.
But what about your first moment? What is your oldest recollection of wine in your life?
I was recently talking to a friend about my father and our regular trips to France while a was a youngster. As we were returning to Canada to see family and friends, France was a logical (obligatory?) stop on our way back. It brought back a memory.
My parents had made friends with a lovely French woman who lived in the south of France. Her parents had a summer home in Masmolène, not far from Avignon, where we would often be invited.
Her father had a picturesque cellar, the kind you automatically envision when thinking about an old country cellar: a stone staircase in the garden would lead into a dark, damp cave with an earthen floor. Amidst the cobwebs would be stacks of wine bottles with handwritten markings. There was a small bottling station and a few casks and barrels lying next to it. As a 7 year old kid, this was as close to Merlin’s laboratory as I would get (until later in life where I actually was invited to a sorcerer’s den in Bénin).
My father, who was a Bordeaux and Burgundy drinker, started acquiring Rhône bottles and sharing in casks with our friend’s father who would keep “our” bottles in a corner of the cellar he reserved for my dad.
One summer, as we normally did, we flew in to Paris and drove down to Masmolène. On the way down, we would often stop in villages to purchase some food for picnics. My dad would always grab a bottle of white or Rosé and then the hunt for a quiet spot with a stream or river would begin. I remember this would often test my patience as hunger would gnaw at my young stomach. But the spots my parents found were always ideal. We would park the rental car where we could and walk down to the selected location and setup for our picnic. The bottle was carefully placed in the water, normally lodged between large rocks so the current wouldn’t whisk it away. That was our ice bucket.
We would eventually reach Masmolène to see our friends once again. That one time, I went down to the cellar with my father and our friend’s father. Our friend’s father, would start by showing my dad what he acquired for him while we were away and this was the first time I remember hearing words like Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Gigondas. They were spoken with almost deference. My dad let me choose the bottle for the night’s dinner for the first time. I remember thinking I was part of the circle. I was in this dark cellar, with the two elders and they would trust me to touch those bottles and actually pick one up. Pride. Joy. Magic.
I chose a bottle, gave it to my dad and we made our way up to the house and dining room. That one night, our friends had gotten andouillettes and they were cooking it in their huge indoor fireplace over a fire fed by ceps de vignes and sarments. I will remember that smell for the rest of my life. It was the first time I had andouillette.
We sat to dinner and my father let me taste the wine. I don’t remember what it tasted like. I had a 7 year old’s sip of it. I probably tried acting like an adult and proclaimed it was great. My dad and our friend’s father tried the wine. There was no dissecting the flavor profile and long winded description of that wine. My father and our friend’s father simply looked at each other and nodded approvingly.
That is what I like to remember as my first wine memory.
And then you wonder why I got into wine…