CORKAGE

If you’re into wine, the words “'89 Bordeaux” carry enormous emotional power. 

A few weeks ago I was going to some dinner or something and I wanted to bring a really nice bottle  (I always want to bring a really nice bottle) that wouldn’t cost a ridiculous amount of money.  I went to Wally’s and Ben (who I trust) recommended the ’89 Chateau Rochebelle from St. Emilion.  Sixty-nine bucks for an '89 Bordeaux?  What's wrong with it?  Ben assures me, twinkle in his eye, this is great wine.  I buy a bottle, and then the dinner gets cancelled.  The wine's been sitting in my house ever since, staring at me.

Then last night I was invited to a taco party.  It was a very hot day, the food would be spicy and people would be drinking beer and margaritas and sweet agua fresca.  in short, this was the absolutely WRONG occasion to bring my ’89 Bordeaux. 

So here’s what the voice in my head says:  “if I ACKNOWLEDGE that this wine is totally inappropriate for the occasion, and then I bring it and announce to everyone I encounter, "I have brought this inapproprietely nice bottle of wine", then I will attract the people who really want to drink it (huddled in a corner, eschewing tequila) and so by some weird osmosis the wine will become counter-intuitively/anti-socially appropriate."  That's the voice in my head.

Because let’s face it, wine is all about “set and setting” (which I believe was Timothy Leary’s phrase for the key to any good acid trip.  Then it was Ken Kesey who said screw set and setting -- anywhere, any time) 

It would certainly be a disaster if I just brought the wine and handed it to my hostess and expected her to deal, or if I opened it and left it on the alcohol table.  It would crush me to see people randomly pouring and drinking, without pondering. 

So I ride over with my buddy Josh and tell him I’m bringing an inappropriately nice bottle of wine.  Great, he says, I’ll have some.  Cool, one partner in crime.

We get to the party.  I keep the wine tucked under my arm, flash it to the hostess when she greets us, so she can see I brought something, and then I tuck it right back under my arm.

I fall into conversation with some cool TV writer dude, who's drinking some beer and lime juice mixture, and I ask him if he’d have ANY interest in this wine.  I flash it, and he says he’d be extremely interested – once the sun goes down.  Brilliant.  There's a plan: once the sun goes down.  The inside of the house is a sauna, so I tuck my bottle behind a large planter, in the shade.

A couple of hours pass.  I eat tacos and drink water.  The sun goes down.  I'm hanging with a cool little group in a corner of the patio.  I ask about the wine.  One of the group is 18 years sober, no go.  One is pregnant, but says she’ll have a little bit.  Josh is still game.  And so is the TV writer.  I go to the planter and grab the bottle.  It's a tad warm so I plunge it into the ice with all the beers.  Five minutes later I take it out, it's room temp, perfect.  I grab four glass tmblers.  I open the wine.  I pour out four glasses.

I smell.  Wow.  There it is, people.  Mmmmmmm.  That blackcurrant and cedar, right there, springing out of the glass, the essence of Bordeaux.  I taste, that cedar again, an element that seems to go hand in hand with the restraint that is my favorite Bordeaux.  The fruit, a little bit lush and plummy, because this is right bank wine (lots of Merlot) and a little bit leathery spicy.  It's not one of those right bank massive, overly extracted concoctions.  It tastes like a classic Medoc, but with a little bit more plumminess and spiciness.  It's brilliant.  For 69 bucks, it's genius. 

I ask the sober alcoholic if she minds if I “ooh and ah”.  She says not at all.  I ooh and ah.  The pregnant girl has half a glass, she loves it.  Josh loves it.  The conversation gets a little deeper, the sense of well-being a little more pronounced.  A wine almost 20 years old, so vibrant, not tannic, so perfectly balanced, classic, beautiful. 

The tres leches cake comes out just as the last of the wine is being enjoyed.  Set and setting.  Perfect after all.