Never give up on a wine! Give it every chance before you judge it. Judge every bottle, too as there is always the possibility that one or more may have a problem with the cork. Always be open-minded and try and always see the bigger picture that what seems so sure to you may in fact be so completely wrong.
What am I specifically talking about here? I know I need to explain more. It's now Sunday, March 28th, 2010 here at my home in northern Virginia where I took these pictures of this bottle of ESCARPMENT 2002 Martinsburough, New Zealand Pinot Noir that I had enjoyed the night before with my wife and my daughter on Sunday, March 22nd, 2010. The bottle really pleased me a whole lot. My wife found it a bit coarse and rustic and not as appealing as I did. I think that she would have enjoyed it more two or three years ago more than now. She would have liked I believe to taste more of the brightness in the wine of dark roasted and toasted black cherries and berries more than the way they had now become more muted and earthy. She would have perhaps liked it more if we had not been outside sitting on our deck out back in peace and tranquility but with no food to accompany it. That was perhaps a mistake on my part : I might have waited to serve it with the dinner - the pork roast that I was grilling there to our side on our grill. She did enjoy her glass at our table later with our daughter and son.
I was impatient to try it though. I wanted to see if this bottle was good and had not suffered like some of those that we had opened earlier in the week at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits ( 3423 Connecticut Avenue N.W. Washington D.C. 20008 Tel: 202-363-4265 sales@clevelandparkwine.com www.clevelandparkwine.com ) ? I wanted it to be good of course. I was hoping and rooting for it to still be good and even great. It came from a good year with lots of promise and I had already enjoyed it at least once or twice before and so I knew it's potential. I knew that it had plenty of structure, body, flavors that would need time to develop and grow , mature and unfold over the palates of grateful people like me and you. It was all there ; just a bit young and tight when I had first tasted it.
And this bottle was much better than good : it was excellent and quite evolved and at this particular moment in it's evolution needing that pork roast that was cooking and sizzling nicely away on the flames of my grill beside us. I was excited to combine the two later and see what tastes would arise that existed as a result of this combination of 2002 ESCARPMENT Martinsborough Pinot Noir with this well-basted and juicy and seared and charred yet moist skinned pork roast? That's the magic that is spoken of when you combine a certain wine with a certain food and " voila! " a " new flavor and taste sensation " emerges that did not exist before the two were united like this.
In this case I was just so busy enjoying the wine and the fact that this bottle was still very much alive and delicious to drink that I did not pay as much attention to the combination. They worked beautifully together and I was enjoying the pork roast very much and saying silent " thank yous " and " hallelujahs " with each sip that I took and rolled my tongue around my mouth to get as much flavor extracted from each taste before finally having to swallow something so earthy and spicy and with such great mineral and toasty accents that zipped/ripped as if in shouts and punctuations and exclamation points to the creamy wood and gentler tannins : where fruit and acidity, alcohol and tannins had all melled so nicely into a framework that soothed, cajoled, teased, ripped and throbbed in sync to a fluid movement of liquid tastes that was almost like that of a song being sung doing much the same : both artistic pleasures and triumphs meant to lift the soul and bring joy and warmth and a sense of fulfillment and well-being for this moment in time. Like a much-needed reaffirmation of life and one's self and a wonderful moment to recharge one's batteries.
I have found such wonderful comfort and thrill and gentle excitement in these moments that I start to share each weekend evening when I fix dinner for my family and that while doing that get to share these moments before with my wife. It brings such joy and such warmth and appreciation for time spent well with her , often outside looking out at our backyard of flowers, herbs, bushes, ornamental grasses, etc while listening to the bird songs, watching the birds bathe in our bird bath, and the " Woody " woodpeckers with their bright red crests ( just like the color found in wine like this ESCARPMENT 2002 Pinot Noir ) when the sun gets to shine through it. The squirrels move and jump dexterously from limb to branch to trunk of small, middlin' and big trees, the falling sun casts so many shades of light as it falls through the trees and the various green canopy of their leaves, the clouds and sun play hide-and-seek and the bats start to stir in their ever-constant meal of insects way up high above our heads. It's very peaceful and tranquil and like a very welcome " pause " - as if being put on automatic pilot and being able to watch and observe pass by you without having to be in the driver's seat and driving anywhere at the moment. Just " to be ". just being - existing, enjoying. How often do we have a chance to really wrap ourselves up in " the moment " and not be doing something more than just relaxing and enjoying? Not often.
This is what I just wrote and what you will now read below I started earlier in the week and then added to at the end. It's very much how I work these days : I piece things together as I have the time. It's my canvas and my white sheet of paper so-to-speak to fill and to add-to as I have a moment and the focus to collect my thoughts and write them down like this and share them.
I try and bring lots of fragments of thought and feeling and soul and guts - nice and refined, raw and guttural and sometimes messy and hard ; beautiful and ugly and hopefully , all-in-all a truer representation of things and the moment or set of moments and events that I see a thread that may or does already join them.
So, this was a really fine moment : first just my wife and I outside in our still damp deck after the day's rain and then later at our dinner table with our daughter and son with a pork roast that I had made for our dinner.
The ESCARPMENT 2002 Martinsborough Pinot Noir from New Zealand showed beautifully in all it's perfections and imperfections. I loved it : it's what wine is about for me : many highs and lows and valleys and crevices and soaring vistas over all these below as one's palate and imagination take flight on the wings of this Pinot and overlooking the bottle of ESCARPMENT below!
I saved the wine from certain death. This is a long and convoluted story and it shows that it's never finished till the fat lady sings : there's always hope and each and every bottle in this case needs to be opened and tasted.
But first let me share a bit about last night's 2002 bottle of ESCARPMENT. It was heady, earthy, pithy and rustic and tasted of earth and plant and grape and vine and skin and grape-pips warmed over by nine month's of toiling and basking in the various elements. It spoke of survival and perseverance and holding-on and not giving up and making it through alive : much like the recent process of mine where I gave all the remaining bottles away to our customers believing that some would still be good!
That's what we can do as a small store : we can keep our hopes and our dreams alive for these wines. We can make the time to talk about them and give them their fifteen minutes of fame that many of them deserve. We may make time to roll with them as they are very much alive just like you and I. We can try and understand their particular woes and worries and concerns almost as if they were people like you and me Of course I understand that they are wines and not people. However, they are very much alive and changing all the time and they do age and develop and evolve and sometimes to our liking and sometimes not. So many people today seem to like their wines when really young and bright and brash and very much fruity and bold and in one's face. Here we have the 2002 ESCARPMENT Martinsburough Pinot Noir with some definite bottle age and with three bottles already having turned to a muddy murk, dull and muted and brown and with a bouquet to make me scrunch up my face and move far away from my Riedel tasting glass!
We received a shipment of " inventory reduction " wines from Bacchus Imports and so of course we had to taste a bottle of each of the wines with Gary Diamond our Neil Empson rep, He came to the store an hour or so after we received the shipment. Together he, Chris Barker, Chris Manning ( of Republic National ), Jeremy Sutton ( of Kysela Pere et File er Fille ), Paul Jameson ( of the JAMESON Wine Experience ), and I all sampled these various Italian and New Zealand wines. They were all older vintages that had been properly stored by Neil Empson and so it was just a matter of knowing the exact state of evolution of the wines so that we might know better how to sell them to our customers in Cleveland Park N.W. Washington D.C. It was our day to see our various sales people and so that is why everyone was here at the same time. We all love wine and so it was nice that so many of us could taste them and share our observations. And as I have said, the only one that we had problems with unfortunately was this ESCARPMENT 2002 Martinsburough New Zealand Pinot Noir : three in a row ; two from the same six-bottle case and one from one below that I insisted on opening to try " just one more". I would have tried another and another if it had been up to me but it was a busy day and a busy time getting ready for this Grand Sale with all these wonderful and exciting ( aged and mature and Greta Value ) wines that we had just received from Bacchus Imports. Later, I told myself : later I will return to this. It crushed me at this moment, however thinking that this was the last wine that I expected to have any problems with from the ones that we had just received.
So, in this case it was a question for me of believing that some of the bottles should still be okay. Of course knowing which ones might be okay and which might not it made it difficult to try and sell them at any cost. They originally sold for around $40-$45 a bottle and I had often found that they needed to be enjoyed with a meal if drunk young as they need some time in the bottle to evolve and show and strut all their stuff hidden deep inside. Of course many of our customers don't want to wait and want to drink the wine now. That's a great pity for me as I believe that many of them have never experienced the joys to be had with drinking a wine at it's peak : when it's on a plateau and showing all of it's flavors and tastes and flavors evolved and where the various components of the wine are in harmony with the others.
Here I had decided that offering them to customers to try in the hopes that they may get a good bottle and not one that had turned to a muddy, undrinkable murkiness ( that was displeasing to the nose ) was our best hope to salvage and to pay both homage and our respects to those good bottles. I simply had to believe in the possibility that some could still be very much alive and wonderful and a real treat. As I said earlier we had three bottles that were a disaster and undrinkable, one after the other. Even so I kept the dream alive inside me as we tasted the three bottles that were undrinkable that there still could be some survivors. I am glad that I did, too.
And there were : four or more that I know of now and that's four more than we knew of before opening any more of the bottles here at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits that first day that our shipment showed up. Of all the wines that did show up this was the only one that we encountered any problems.
But I knew the reputation of the winery : I had met owner Larry in Georgetown years before at a dinner at a fun, trendy restaurant called Me 'N You? That's how it sounds the name. I just googled it because I wanted to be sure. It's : Mie N Yu on M Street N.W. ( 202-333-6122 ). He is supposed to have put New Zealand on the international stage with his first bottles of excellent ESCARPMENT. The world took notice of these Pinot Noirs of Larry's and I got to try at least one or two of them at this dinner in Georgetown. Naomi Barber that works for Neal Empson Imports and is responsible for the development and promotion of them here in the United States had invited me to this dinner with Larry and four or five other owners/ wine-makers of VOSS, PEREGRINE, PEGASUS BAY ( the sales export manager was there ), and CLEARVIEW. I think I have mentioned them all? I hope so as I hate to leave names out that should be included. I am now at home and so will check my records when back at the store to be sure soon.
I was thrilled to be included : thank you Naomi for inviting me. I appreciate this more than you know as I was the only retail person invited. No one else was invited from the retail trade whether from a restaurant or a wine store. It was all for the sales staff of Neil Empson and including both John and Larry that ran Bacchus Imports back then. Of course Neil Empson himself and Mike Conroy and Franceen Rosensweig ( now Khang ) were there, too. I sat next to Anette the owner of VOSS with her husband that was not in attendance. I hit if off immediately with Anette. That was also a big treat for me. John the president of Bacchus Imports sat to my right. I have pictures of this dinner that I need to scan and write a separate blog on sometime in the future.
So, to date now on this Sunday I think that at least a third of the bottles that I have given away ( if not more ) have all been solid and wonderful and a treat for those that got them from couples with a newborn, married couples, dating couples, a birthday for one of the two, lovers of the Pinot Noir grape, a talented and successful graphic artist and more. This makes me feel so great : this affirms for me as I felt quite certain that it would that life is resilient and strong and won't easily be defeated by the world outside and the elements.
I think that we made some new friends and strengthened many of our already existing bonds between store and customer. I think this brought some real joy to our customers that they were not expecting and that caught them very pleasantly off guard and that brought them some of all the above joy and warmth that I have been speaking about. And it all cost them nothing : they just happened to be in our store at the right time.
And so all was not for naught here. I will next show the new " The Edge " 2008-2009 Pinot Noir as well as the next current vintage to our customers of the ESCARPMENT. We have made some " new " customers for ESCARPMENT and that's what it is all about : making the right connections. We did and have here. And now more people will buy some of the the wines having been so pleased with the 2002 ESCARPMENT. It's ended better than well here.
So we now have the " new value " ESCARPMENT Pinot Noir from Larry on our shelves : " The Edge " 2008 Pinot Noir I believe it is that we are selling for $19.99 a bottle. It has already sold quite well over the last three weeks that we have had it. Thanks Gary for bringing it to our attention on one of your last visits to the store. We are thrilled to have it. We also have a few bottles of the ESCARPMENT 2003 ( $42.99 a bottle I believe ) that any of you may purchase when you come by next. I think we will have to ask Naomi or Gary to bring the current ESCARPMENT Martinsborough Pinot Noir to us to try soon and buy for our shelves. When can you bring a bottle by for Chris Barker and me to sample?
So , as I said above here : Never give up on a wine. Give it every chance that you can before judging it.
Try to get into it's skin so to speak and live it's life for awhile and try and understand where it is coming from and what it brings to the table and to your palate? What are it's strengths and how may they best be tasted and enjoyed?
If you do not immediately " get it " don't give up on it : come back a few minutes later and try it with some other food. Chill it a bit to bring out the energy it has stored up inside as well as focusing it with this slight chill. Try another bottle when you get a chance. Remember, it's alive and changing as I write here and as you taste it. It has different moods and impressions/expressions that are affected by it's environment ; very much like you and I are. And realize that you have to work in the relationship that you have with the wine . That anything worth having is worth fighting for and believing in. Just don't give up. " Fight against the dying of the light! "
Larry, when will we meet again? I look forward to our next encounter. And thanks for these excellent bottles of 2002 ESCARPMENT Pinot Noir.
Sorry for any typos or omissions here. I've made it a long and a convoluted story and I hope you enjoy it and can make sense of it all. Please add any of your comments in the comment section that appears just after this blog.
Cheers, TONY
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