Last weekend Sue and I took advantage of her extra day off from the four-year-olds at St. Peter’s to pay a last-of-the-season visit to the Sandisfield house, and wrap it up for the winter.
Sue is a great cook (I live a charmed life), and because the Berkshires are crowded on Columbus Day weekend with the first “leafers” of the season, and our favorite restaurants were all booked out, we planned on a quiet dinner at home. She had brought most of what she needed, except for some grape tomatoes and fresh spinach, which I volunteered to get at Guido’s in Great Barrington.
That gave me an excuse to take the old Superhawk (above) on a last thirty-mile ride before draining the tank and taking out the battery, and the old motorcycle too, is wrapped up for the winter. Fortunately, before I left, I checked the refrigerator downstairs to see what wine might be available.
Hmm. A bottle of old Auslese from Johann Peter Reinert and a few Corona Lights left by friends of my son. Not the Saint-Amour of Georges Trichard, or the Château Revelette Rouge that I’d hoped to find. So I’d have to get a bottle of wine at Guido’s, too. No problem on the bike. My Victorinox backpack would easily accommodate a bottle of wine along with the rest.
It had been so long since I actually purchased a bottle of wine in a retail store other than Moore Brothers that I forgot what to expect.
The wine department at Guido’s is stocked with all the usual Yellow Tails and Rabbit Ridges and other industrial products, but I was pleased to find a small selection of real wines that just might be suitable, and settled on a Bourgogne Passetoutgrains 2005 from Domaine Robert Chevillon, a very good grower in Nuits St. Georges.
Big mistake.
It had been so long since I actually purchased a bottle of wine in a retail store other than Moore Brothers that I forgot what to expect. My bad. The wine smelled faintly of an old ashtray, along with hints of the slightly sweet decay that reminds me of Aunt Betty’s house, always closed up and overheated; suffocating in the winter.
What had slipped my mind is that almost all wine sold in America is stale: damaged by heat in transport or storage.
I am so accustomed to wine that was picked up at each winery in a refrigerated truck, then shipped, warehoused, and delivered to Moore Brothers in perfect condition, that the experience of tasting stale wine was jarring: sort of the reverse of the experience of first-time travelers who drink the house wine at a little farmhouse hotel in Abruzzi, and wonder why it seems so wholesome and compelling and good.
So I repeat: almost all wine sold in America is stale. Once again: almost all wine sold in America is stale. Without wine from Moore Brothers available, I would have done better to stop at the Barrington Brewery and picked up a couple of liters of their excellent, fresh Berkshire Blond.