Transitions
Written By: Brian Freedman on Thu, Sep 13th 2007
If I had any question that summer was over before this week, the current state of my wine cellar drove it home: For the first time since this spring, there is no more rosé to enjoy.
There are whites, sure, and even a bottle of Vinho Verde. But of the pink stuff—well, I’m tapped. It’ll now be another 10 or 11 months before I stock up again, filling my shelves with bottles that, even in their color alone, scream summertime.
Sure, I could find a few stragglers on the shelves. And if I really wanted to, I could force the warm-weather issue and pop open a bottle or three the next time I have friends over. But it’s just not the same: A sweating glass of cold rosé, enjoyed under the merciless mid-summer sun, always seems to taste better. Anything else is just going through the motions. And, frankly, ends up making me more depressed than happy, which isn’t what wine drinking is about at all.
There is, however, reason to rejoice this time of year. After all, man (and woman) cannot live on summertime fare alone, and cannot derive 360-degrees of wine satisfaction only from rose and warm-weather bottlings.
The other day, in fact, I did an experiment: After finishing my last bottle of pink—the spectacular Boxcar 2006 (not cheap…and worth every last penny)—my father and I uncorked a wine that we’d been wanting to taste all summer, but for which we’d been waiting until the time was right.
And the time, indeed, was right: We were having a big family dinner, my mother made her delicious braised short ribs, my wife and I had driven in with my sister, brother-in-law, and their new son, and we wanted a bottle to kick off the first family gathering of the fall in style.
So we opened the Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 1991.
Its color showed less age than I would have expected—lots of good garnet tones, with only a hint of brick at the edges. The nose was all leather and tobacco, but as it opened up, a solid core of raspberry, blackberry, and cinnamon began to assert itself. By this time, of course, it was a bit over the hill, and the palate reflected that: The fruit had mellowed out to the point that you really had to look for it, but the tannins were still nice and velvety, and provided an excellent backbone for the mid-palate of dried flowers, apricots, and something that reminded me of nothing so much as iron.
Was it perfect? Certainly not. But was it delicious in its own way? Absolutely. And it was perfect for the time of year—a little deeper, and little more intellectually demanding: A thinking person’s wine.
Who the heck wants something like that in the summer?
I love rose, and I haven’t yet found a more perfect wine for that sizzling, carefree time of year. But when it’s over, it’s best to just accept it and move on. There’s an entirely new world of wine pleasure out there this time of year. Make the most of it. The rewards are incalculable.
