Wine and Music
Waxing Poetic for a Change of Pace

Savigny-Les-Beaunes 1er Cru 1997, Les Serpentières, Maurice Ecard et fils ($57...importation)

Taking a gulp of Basic Juice has brought back a bit of perspective. Great wines achieve greatness for reasons which go beyond simply what is in the bottle. It is all about the pairing; with the food, with her skin, her eyes, with the mood or with the tunes. There is something inexplicably beautiful about this transcendance that reminds us that life is more than the routines we acquire, more than simply the explicable mechanics of it all.

Tonight it is cold, real cold. And with the wood stove cranked, and the house quiet, I am lucky enough to have chosen the right bottle for the circumstance. This is Burgundy, a wine that revels in it’s complexity, a wine that as the hours pass discards previous impressions, only to reveal new variations of the theme, gaining complexity with that ever elusive amplitude that only Pinot Noir can capture. If I put on Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, the harmonies would be outrageous. It has been 6 hours since I opened the bottle and those low level tannins are still present, not at all inhibiting, acting more like a Bass, keeping beat, adding depth, maintaining the structure. Ecard works with fruit, and what started as notes of kirsch, red-berries, nutmeg and some sort of flower whose scent is just a bit beyond the grasp of my memory, has become cherries and raspberry jam mixed with a velvety earthiness. It is so soft, so delicate, so powerful. I smell my empty glass and it is still alive with flavour, almost a smoky strawberry jam. Burgundy rocks.