summer wines

With the combination of a summer riesling meeting at Terroir (dark photos), the arrival of Clos Roche Blanche at UVA (Pineau d'Aunis Rose, 'L'Arpent Rouge', and their Gamay), a new additional job at great restaurant with all natural and delicious wine list (called Masten Lake), I find myself surrounded in the summer heat by intelligent and thoughtful wines that have again challenged me, and exerted a kind of instinctual magnetic fascination: those all-tactile, sensuous yet live-wires-in-the-mind connections.

Today, with my phone still (somewhat blissfully) shut off, I am spending the day reading through a stack of books: Keri Hulme, 'The Bone People', MFK Fisher 'As They Were', Colette 'Recollections', and my constant, watchful companion Kermit Lynch's 'Adventures on the Wine Route'. The wine list at Masten Lake is small, beautiful, thoughtful, and risky (put together by Lacey Sugden and Marisa Marthaller), and speaks to things that are ripe, fresh, seasonal, and weird (in that wonderful wine-geeky way).

Our two orange wines: Jean-Yves Peron 2009 Vin de France 'Cotillon des Dames', and Denavolo 'Dinavolino' '09.

Glass pour highlights: Ch. Venier 'Gautrie' Cab Franc ('10) chilled, Chateau Cambon '10 rose (Beaujolais), B. Baudry Chinon '09, and Valle Unite 'Le Brut et the Beast' frizzante. Mssr. Robinot (thx Zev and JC) makes appearances with 'Les Annees Folles' (Pineau d'Aunis, Chenin Blanc) '09 and 'Concerto d'Oniss' (Pineau d'Aunis). I like to think I am heading in the right direction as far as wine knowledge and understanding go, and am glad to be in such good company right now.

From 'The Bone People':

"The crayfish moved in silence through clear azure water. Bright scarlet armour, waving antennae, red legs stalking onward. Azure and scarlet. Beautiful. It was then she realised she was in the middle of a dream, because living crayfish were purple-maroon and orange: only when cooked, do they turn scarlet. A living boiled cray? A crayfish cooking as it walked calmly through a hot pool?

She shuddered. The crayfish moved more quickly through the blue crystal sea and the fog of dreaming increased............." (15)