Live Wines I'm packing and have no time for this blogging nonsense.... Except someone just sent me Eric Asimov's latest New York Times Blog, a wonderful little essay on what Mr. Asimov calls Live Wines. Eric uses Radikon's 2002 Oslavje Bianco (a wine we import and which I have consumed in large quantities) and a 2005 Lazy Creek Vineyards Riesling (which I know nothing about) as examples of Live Wines, wines which have an aliveness. He writes: "Clumsy term? I know. But that’s what these wines are: alive. They don’t sit in the glass waiting to be swallowed. They practically come to you and pull you in, like the scent curling up from one of those cartoon pies cooling on the window sill, reaching out and causing Bugs Bunny problems. This sense of a wine as living comes, I think, from having a captivating texture. You feel the wine coating the tongue and the inside of your mouth, and it feels so good that you are compelled to repeat the exercise. It’s not just white wines, either. Great Champagnes have this texture. So do wonderful Burgundies, but it’s not a question of profundity. Great Beaujolais has it, too. I find it in the Barolos of Giacomo Conterno and Bartolo Mascarello, and in the Brunellos of Biondi Santi and Case Bese di Soldera." I think Eric is on to something. I've been thinking lately about how limiting natural wines, real wines, hand-crafted wines, blah-blah wines are as descriptive terms. I started using the term real wine but that also has the problem of emphasizing the process more than the final outcome. The best I have been able to come up with is Vins Gouleyant, but that's a descriptor in another language which also has its limitations.. But Live Wines is exactly what I mean to say. I have tried natural wines which are as dead as industrial wines -- simply being viticulturally correct doesn't make the wine pop out of the bottle. There is something magic when it all comes together and has that edge and aliveness. I would argue you have to work naturally in your fields and your cellar to get that quality, but the goal of that work is to get something living and vibrant into the bottle, something which amazes, baffles and seduces us because it is so alive and has so much to say. Of course, there is also the corollary category -- Dead Wines. But enough for now, I have to turn off the computer, put it into the computer sleeve, and get going. |
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