Last Sunday was a strange day. It began with Lisa handing me a newspaper, along with the words "You'd better prepare yourself." A picture of our corner diner (which my brother-in-law's brother-in-law used to manage) is on the cover of the New York Post under the headline "Terror Town: Suspects' Lair in the Shadow of the World Trade Center." A quick perusal of the article reveals that there is nothing to it, just typical Murdoch-style sensationalist crap, but it sets an odd dissociative tone which only an urgently inquisitive phone call manages to pierce.
Aack.
We've completely forgotten that we're due at the Olegs' house, land of teeming infants. We've been forgetting many things lately, but this seems especially egregious. One careening car trip later we stumble blinking onto the green turf and sunshine of outer New Jersey, clutching our bottles and wondering how long it has been since we'd bathed and if we're at all fit for human company.
We've been told to look for the house with the big flag, only belatedly realizing that could apply to any house on the street. When we finally find it we receive the usual greetings: good cheer and embraces from Oleg and Inna, snarling and snapping from the Pumpkin the Evil Dingo-Dog, cold nose in crotch from Monty the Good Dingo-Dog. The now familiar exchange, how're you doing you know like everyone else getting by you know managing how're you doing you know like everyone else getting by...
A dripping, shivering Andrew Scott waves hello, as does a bone-dry Jennifer Munro. He gives a thumbs-up: "Seventy degrees, the pool!" he squeaks, information that is belied slightly by his chattering teeth and blue-tinged extremities.
Oleg pushes a glass into my hands, "Have some American Pride!" he says as he pours me Pride Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 1995. It's got the usual things going on in the nose, rich woody black and red fruit, although the herby-oregano streak that began manifesting itself more assertively a couple of years after release is as pronounced as I've noticed it. I'm wistful for the days a couple of years ago when this wine cost twenty bucks (absurdly, it seems to be up around fifty now), as it's still quite rich and fun, the now slightly less exuberant fruit bearing up well under the weight of plenty of smoky wood. With air some signs of disjointedness begin to poke through the cracks that used to be full of creamy dark cassis. This vintage was the last year I bought any significant quantity of this wine, and I suspect it's time to drink 'em up before they come unglued.
We gather round the table on the porch and stare in slack-jawed awe as the three new babies are put through their paces for our perusal. Oleg suggests everyone take one home as a party favor; we politely demur.
Just to swing the pendulum as far in the other direction as possible, here's a Domaine Barmès Buecher Gewürztraminer Steingrubler 1998, and it's a bigass hootie all the way--almost a caricature of gewürziness, lychee candy drizzled with attar, oily mouthfeel, enough acidity not to cloy. I know it's a silly wine, but it makes me smile, and I'm fond of it for that. I begin to pick up a strange burnt-hair note on the finish, but quickly realize that it's just Oleg, who has let the gas grill run a little too long before igniting it, thereby scorching his right arm as clean as one of the many babies' bottoms in evidence.
Here's a Latour Meursault-Perrieres 1992. A very sedate nose, calm yellow fruit with streaks of flint and celery seed, laced throughout with muted vanilla. The midpalate is decently composed but rather inert, just passing through without much fuss into a surprisingly pleasant finish. Not bad, seems to be fading.
A bottle of Domaine des Baumard Savennières Clos Papillon 1997 is slightly less effusive than I remember, the pineapple-earth notes turning towards earth-pineapple, the squeaky-stern acidity coming to the forefront immediately and pushing the tight vein of minerality with it. A big rocky wine, expressive up to a certain point, then rather impenetrable. A winner. Give it thirty years, I'm sure it'll loosen up a bit.
There are babies everywhere--you can't even get to the cheese plate without stepping on one, so I sit tight and sip a Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Special Selection 1995. Mmmm... an upfront rush of woodshop aromas, a creamy mouthfeel with a vein of surprisingly tart dark red fruit that soon is swallowed up by woodiness and fierce drying tannins. It's woody. There's a lot of wood. I don't like a wine this woody. Even the regular '95 is far less distorted by carpentry. Five and a half particle-board Prongs sprayed with glue and cedar chips, then nailed to the remnants of an abandoned beaver dam built on a stream that flows through a sawmill.
An airliner comes into view overhead. We fall silent and watch it until it disappears into the west. Jennifer says "I flinch every time I hear one..." We nod. We drink. A Hirsch Gruner Veltliner Kammerner Heiligenstein Kamptal 1999 is aromatically reticent, quiet and chalky, light tropical-pineapple hints, traces of baked yellow apple, not much in the way of nosality. A sip, and it's got great balance, a fine strong spine and a nice sense of substance without being weighty, but there's more structure than anything else--the young , tightly coiled fruit isn't coming out of hiding any time soon, no matter how often I cry "Olly-olly-in-come-free!" I ask Oleg how to say that in German, but he can only tell me the Russian and Ukrainian versions, which I won't go into here.
We chat about work seeming silly and inconsequential now. Andrew says "But Chris, it's not what you do, it's how you do it." Sometimes Andrew is just asking for a whuppin', but I show inhuman restraint and merely accost him with a bottle of Calera Pinot Noir California 'El Niño' 1999. He scowls at it and mutters darkly about legal action (hipster cousin Tony is winemaker at Scott-Clark Cellars, which also produces an 'El Niño'). It's a light, easygoing mouthful of unassuming cherry-cola pinot, soft but with some small measure of complexity and a pleasant earthy streak in the midpalate. No finish to speak of, but whaddaya want? A relief after the palate-abusing Caymus, and even Andrew has a hard time being negative: "It's not overoaked..." he offers glumly, "and it's recognizable as pinot noir... BUT everyone knows that 'El Niño' is supposed to be grenache and syrah." And that's as much as I get out of him.
A Lingenfelder Riesling Freinsheimer Goldberg Auslese 1998 smells of grapefruit and TCA. Pity, as the grapefruity part seems interesting.
The phone rings periodically, and the dogs go nuts and race about like furry lunatics. This delights Andrew no end; he laughs and claps and laughs and claps.
A Domaine de la Motte (André Sorin) Coteaux du Layon Rochefort Moëlleux 1988 comes by and I take a sniff. Out of the corner of my ear I hear Oleg going on at great length about how he's sure one of the babies is gay and how he plans to love him unconditionally and perhaps join PFLAG, but I figure this is a conversation I want to ignore. The wine has a nicely developed smell-package, almonds, lemon and tea hints over honeyed yellow fruit. Less complex in the gob than it is to smell, medium-plus sweetness, well put together but lacking somewhat in terms of strength and sustain. Nevertheless, it's an interesting, smooth wine.
Here's an old favorite, a Warre's Porto 1983, and it's still a pretty little thing with surprising strength, a Lisalike wine, more cocoaish than it has seemed in the past, very nice, very soothing.
Here events get a little blurry, with our hosts claiming to be jetting off to Olympia Dukakis's villa (can it really be called "Steel Magnolias"?), and when the talk around the table begins to trend towards the dark and apocalyptic we know it's time to go. Peculiarly sober, we head off home knowing that the inevitable void in the skyline will hit us as soon as we round the corner towards Liberty State Park. This time, though, some of the lights in the World Financial Center are on. We pass in silence, lost in our own thoughts.