That Wine is Not Quite Right

I had this written up and was going to post it later in the week, but it seemed to fit the “non-dualistic” or “dualistic” subject matter of last night’s discussion so well that I thought I might publish it early. It certainly shows just how judgmental I can be, and how my own curiosity, fascination, and perhaps a little flexibility of mind thankfully allowed me to experience something I probably wouldn’t have if I had stuck to what I thought was reality. Enjoy. -DV

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There was a small bottle, what I think is called as a “split” or a half wine bottle, sitting around my house for what seemed like years.

First, it sat in a wine rack that had gotten a bit of sun in my dining room. That wine rack was the one I kept my very-soon-to-be-digested wines. The sun had reached that little wine bottle just enough, or so I thought, that it had pushed some of the liquid out the top past its cork. The small amount of liquid that had escaped had created a sticky mess below the bottle. I had thought to myself long ago to take this little mess maker into the kitchen and dump it out.

Something made me leave it… I can’t remember what.

That little bottle didn’t have a label, which means it had, with a high level of probability, come from one of the people who we knew that made wine. You see, one of our acquaintances grows grapes for the wineries that have seemed to have sprung up around here: when we have bought grapes from this person before, to make our own wine, he has given us a bottle of this or that experiment that he had crafted. This small bottle was – very likely – one of his. But… it was curiously a white wine. Our friend usually only made red wines; typically pinot.

Looking back now, to the day that I held the bottle in my hand to finally dump it out, I am surprised that after this little episode where I had cleaned up the mess it had made, my reaction was just to move the bottle to another spot… this time to the kitchen. The mess was small, so it didn’t warrant dumping(?), and then after I moved the bottle to the kitchen, I quickly forgot about it for another long amount of time. And there it stood, the little bottle, next to the very-VERY-soon-to-be-digested red wines on the kitchen counter.

As I held the small bottle, I looked through the green glass of it and perused the color of the wine. It seemed darker than a white normally was; that couldn’t be right. I rummaged for the corkscrew in the “forks and knives” drawer next to the sink.

Larger bottles came and went as company to this small bottle for a long time. Small wine bottles are typically past up for drinking by wine held in larger bottles. In the business of wine though, a small bottle’s contents could actually stand as proud as the larger bottles, like Magnums or the largest of wine bottles the Nebuchadnezzar, for theirs. Except this one had no label, had leaked, and made a mess. Plus – there had to be something wrong with the cork.

My hand quickly reached up to open a counter door, and when it came down, it brought with it a small sized wine glass. Now I HAD to take a look at some of this bottle’s contents. I poured; and as I saw the golden color of the wine slosh gracefully into the bottom of the clear glass, my mind recalled some details of the origin of the contents of that small bottle, and finally to what it was that slept inside of it. As I raised the glass to my nose, both my palette and my mind sounded in delight as I remembered our wine making friend’s description of the experiment that he had made to produce what was in this bottle,

“… I was experimenting with this new grape I was growing this year. Have you heard of Viognier? It is typically made like Riesling where vintners will leave some residual sugar in it. I decided to experiment a little and try to make ice wine this year… “

Our wine making buddy went on to explain how he used a bucket to freeze the wine and then broke a hole in the bottom of the bucket to remove only the non-water based liquid. This process simulated how iced wine was made, without the risk, which typically make iced wine much more expensive. Could it really be good?

I raised the glass to my lips, and the honey like wine covered my palette. Wow…

I would say the experiment was a success. For the next four days I celebrated not dumping that little bottle into the drain.

Everything about that wine, by all “appearances”, should have been bad, or should it have? The not-so-right wine, by every indication of a typical white wine was wrong; but then the wine wasn’t so typical. So for four days I drank a not so typical wine – and – what could possibly have been the best iced wine I have ever tasted. What a wonderful treat – to save from the sink.

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That reminds me, I need to call our grape growing friend and see if he has any bottles left…

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