After my last post lamented that Le Cigare Volant 2003 the “UFO Wine” could not be found in West Michigan, I happened to find it at a local wine merchant after all and picked up a bottle for around US $30. Normally, this price point for wine is high for me, but since I had a coupon for 20% off (in exchange for my email address, I guess everyone has his price!), I picked up a bottle and with some excellent homemade lasagna and fig salad, uncorked unscrewed the cap with much anticipation. But rather than be abducted by a sublime mixture of ripe fruits, dark chocolate and a hint of tobacco, my palate was greeted instead with a fairly ordinary red wine blend. Blah. Those little gray aliens were smart not to land in the California vineyard producing that wine; the buggers appear to have discriminating taste buds after all, apart from the cattle mutilations, of course.
However, unless corked (ha, no chance of that with a screw top), each bottle of wine can be appreciated to some extent. As Maya remarked in Sideways (and this is one of the best wine quotes ever):
I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I'd opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks, like your '61. And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline.
So, even though the “UFO wine” was not out of this world, it was still well, wine for God’s sake, and something to be savored with good food, family and friends.
Thanks for blogging with me thus far.
