The Rake Magazine

When friends of ours — dedicated and robust red wine drinkers — dropped by last weekend, here's what I had on hand:

A $100 Hartwell Stags Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon (2002) that someone had given me as a gift [because believe me, this is not in my keep-it-around-the-house price range]. A Chilean Merlot from Casa La Joya (2006) which retails for around $15. And Our Daily Red, an organic, sulfite-free California table wine (2006) I picked up for $7.99.

An odd flight, I give you that. We started with Hartwell, on the theory that it was important to drink the most expensive wine while our palates were fresh.

"Nice legs," our friend, Mitch, said. And yes, this Cab had nearly perfect form — like an ice dancer who routinely earns a 9.9. It was as smooth a California vintage as has ever passed my lips, with rich fruit (blackberry, cherry, blueberry, and currant) and a finish that I have to say was almost TOO clean. This was much like drinking a 20-year single malt Scotch or eating a single perfect mono-flavored truffle. In other words, not quite satisying. Maybe it's just me, but I like some drama in my food, wine, and. . . .well, other hedonistic endeavors. You know, a few ragged edges here and there.

I brought out some cheese, crackers, a little smoked fish. Then we opened the Chilean Merlot. Call me common, call me what you will. But this was more like it: Che on his motorcycle, riding the coast against a stiff wind. This wine was juicy and brash and a little dry. And it turns out I'm not so pedestrian as all that. . . .the reserve La Joya (think of it as the older, more refined cousin of the one we drank) won "best Merlot in the world" at the 2002 international wine and spirit competition.

We sat at the table for a couple hours. Dark fell. Teenagers (our own and others) stopped in to talk; somewhere along the line my husband put on an Annie Lennox CD. Around the time my daughter brought the leftover Thanksgiving desserts out on a tray, we uncorked Our Daily Red.

Now I was pretty mellow by this point. Great friends, good food, children milling and laughing in the background. Perhaps this had an effect. But when I took a sip of this $8 wine, I was amazed at how decent it was. A blend of Syrah, Carignan, and Cabernet, it was simple and fruity with a little acidic kick.

I certainly wouldn't make a habit of drinking ODR -- and after half a glass, I detected a very faintly dirty taste that I didn't exactly love. I am, however, all in favor of the idea that everyday table wines should be affordable and approachable and good companions, if you will. Rather than requiring attention or being the star, this sort of wine will let you focus on what's important: the people at the table, the music in the air, and the group of wonderfully raucous kids in the next room.

If only I'd known when I posted my last entry about White Burgundy and Fall Out Boy!

Suddenly, everyone in the wine world seems to be talking about Clark Smith who -- along with his wife, Dr. Susan Mayer-Smith -- has been conducting "research" into the relationship between wine and music. The owners of GrapeCraft Wines, she (Susan) holds a PhD in clinical psychology while he (Clark) states on their website that his "claim to fame" is having been fired by Alice Waters, then goes on to talk about his own "Svengali-like charisma."

I want to make it clear right up front: I have not tasted the wines from GrapeCraft. For all I know, they may be nigh to ambrosia. But come on. . . .This musicology thing -- on which they presented a paper at the 13th annual Australian Wine Industry Technical Conference, and about which Clark was interviewed by the host of Day to Day on NPR -- seems to me to be based more on savvy marketing principles than real science.

Smith's thesis is that a wine's flavor will be "dramatically affected" by the music a drinker listens to as he or she sips. Cabernet Sauvignon, he says, requires "music of darkness," but might be ruined by a light chamber quartet. Pinot Noir calls for Mozart, while white Zinfandel will be improved (you're not going to believe this one. . . .) by a good polka. Sweet Chardonnay must be served to the Beach Boys. Yeah, well, I wish we all could be California Girls.

Back when I was in graduate school, I once ran into a woman at a party who had recently received a $150,000 grant from the NEA to study The Sopranos and measure the show's impact on society as well as evaluate its relationship to George Eliot's Middlemarch. (I'm 100% serious about this.) I remember being torn between envy and derision. My husband at the time, a carpenter, was simply admiring. "What a scam," he crowed. Indeed.

That there is a relationship between music and wine is all but indisputable. Also between music and food, music and learning, music and sex.In fact, I've long contended that people eat more (and taste less) in cacaphonous environments, which is why I wouldn't consume a morsel in a shopping mall -- not even if Julia Child herself rose from the dead and appeared at Eden Prairie Center to prepare Coq Au Vin.

We play Mozart to children because it is complex and mathematically structured, so it helps the brain develop connections in a similarly synthesized way. And we don't make love to marching band music (please keep it to yourself if you do), but rather to Marvin Gaye, k.d. lang, Leonard Cohen, and Sting.

In other words, I'm not saying the Clarks are wrong -- they're only pointing out what musicians have known since they worked for emperors and kings.

Earlier this month, I wrote about the M. Chapoutier Belleruche Côtes-Du-Rhône 2005 and said it was "as balanced as Beethoven's Sixth Symphony," with a nearly metrical composition of sugar, acid, and fruit. I'm sure the description occurred to me because of the inherent shared qualities of great music and fine wine. But the fact that someone is making a name by pointing out the obvious strikes me as ridiculous -- the sort of whimsy only the NEA should support.

As for that concert I attended, I'm quite regretful now. It occurs to me that Fall Out Boy's The Carpal Tunnel of Love was literally screaming out for a good Shiraz.

You would think — would you not? — that having been rendered temporarily, partially deaf would improve one's ability to evaluate wine. Blindness, after all, makes the other senses more acute. Why not a faint pain and constant ringing of the ears.

I had occasion to ponder this on Thanksgiving, after attending the Young Wild Things concert with my daughter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the night before. They, the wild things, were Cute Is What We Aim For, Plain White T's, Gym Class Heroes (whom I adore), and the smashingly loud yet strangely dirge-ish Fall Out Boy. The last, headline band was accompanied by popping bursts of fire, a la Whitesnake, which amused most of the 40- and 50-something parents in the audience — and there were, by the way, A LOT: so many that Travy from GCH dedicated one entire song to us.

Four hours. That's how long we sat in the auditorium in C.R.

But it was all worth it when, as we drove away through a sprinkling of midnight snow, my daughter turned to me, huge brown eyes shining, and said, "It feels like something's missing now that I don't have that thumping in my chest."

The following day, Thanksgiving, I uncorked a Domaine de la Bongran Grand Vin de Borgogne, a white Burgundy from Clessé, France, 2002. I'd been saving the bottle, because it was expensive, highly-rated, and promised to be excellent. This, I decided, would be the perfect opportunity: my ears were wrecked, so surely my nose and tongue would be in top condition.

Not so. Perhaps because I'm a bit of a synesthete — all my senses intertwined like tentacles of computer wire — I was in my echoey state also olfactorily confused. I smelled lime at the outset, and that was right. But after that, I got a whiff of green onion that no one else at the table (and luckily, I'd invited some excellent tasters) could detect.

"You cut onions for the salad earlier," said one friend, tactfully. "Could that be it?" Indeed. It probably was.

Everyone agreed that the wine was smooth and dry and delicious in a not-quite-crisp sort of way. The first taste seemed whole, as solid and neatly planed as a jewel. But as this Burgundy warmed and softened and unfolded, it became more complex, with a warm, sunny apricot flavor that filled the mouth and a finish that contained a bit of flint.

Gradually, I figured out how to taste in my impaired state. This required intense concentration, and a palm pressed to my right ear in order to mute the dull throb inside. I got the spoke-like qualities of the Grand Vin de Borgogne, even if I couldn't make the connection (as I might, under normal circumstances) between its flavor profile and a summer sunshower or a Sheryl Crow song.

I have it on good authority — both Robert Parker's and my Thanksgiving guests' — that the Bongran Grand Vin de Borgogne (a Chardonnay wine with 14% alcohol) is well worth all the accolades it's received. But I probably need a couple more days, preferably in a stark, white room with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young playing in a continuous loop and at low volume, before I'll be recovered enough to tell you on my own.

I'm an unreliable narrator. You should know this.

Here are my flaws: I'm alternately delighted and devastated by other people (there is, for me, little middle ground); I look for meaning in everything I see, whether or not it exists; and I believe too fervently in my own ability to change circumstances, no matter what the odds.

So it was with my older son, who came back to us from the Mayo Clinic in June, like a whiteboard wiped clean. We'd spent years treating him for autism -- OT, PT, kinesthetic exercises, biofeedback, social skills programs, and DMG. He made remarkable progress until the age of 17, when, after treatment for depression he began to slide back and then went into a near-vegetative state. Eighteen months later, we took him to Rochester nearly dead and they returned him to us (for which I am profoundly grateful) exactly the child he'd been at five: mute, ritualistic, lost . . . .

The thing about my son -- about so many people with autism -- is that he was very able to do things. Play chess, navigate the city, balance my checkbook, or bake a cake. Most of his brain was functioning just fine, but the area controlling his ability to communicate had been shuttered down or roped off.

For the past three months, he's been in a transitional post-high school program where one of his main activities seems to be riding the bus from class to the shopping mall, three miles away. The goal, I guess, is to teach independence. But the tedium of his days, frankly, drives me insane.

"We could drop him off in St. Paul on a Sunday," I told my husband. "Give him 20 bucks, tell him to buy himself lunch, and I'll bet you anything he could find his way back."

"How sure are you?" my husband asked. At which point, I went to an ATM and withdrew a $20 bill.

Last Sunday, on the first chilly day of winter, we took our nearly-20-year-old autistic son to Highland Park mid-morning and left him with instructions to find buses that would lead him home and call us if something went wrong. Then we waited. . . .and I spent the afternoon pacing, wondering how crazed and wrong and stupidly hopeful a mother can be.

Around 5, about an hour after a wet snow had begun to fall, my phone rang. I was certain it was he, calling to say he was cold and ask me to pick him up in some remote and unkown locale.

It was my son, but he was calling only to ask if I was ready to see him at home. He'd had a pleasant time wandering through the shops in Highland Park then found a bus bound for Minneapolis, transferred twice, treated himself to a calzone at Old Chicago in Uptown around 3:30 and had been killing time ever since.

He arrived a short time later. And all this is true: He speaks little, and only haltingly, but there was a broad smile on his face as he took 20 minutes to describe his day. I tried not to cry and opened a Collection des Chateaux de Bordeaux.

I'd love to draw a parallel here; the essayist in me is dying to tell you I chose this wine because it, too, is put together in an utterly unconventional way, mixing the best Bordeauxs of any one year to come up with a blend of Merlot and Cab that's instantly drinkable but also ages well. That would, however, be a lie: I had none of this in mind when I uncorked the bottle and took the first sip. I really only wanted something to do as I waited through the pauses in my son's story, never mind the dry, oaky flavor and piano notes of pepper, tannins, and plum.

There is no real moral to this story. My husband drove my son home to the place where he lives with his father, then returned and gently took my glass away. The bottle was nearly empty and I was bleary, limp with wine and relief. I still believe I can change the world if I just wish hard enough. Sometimes it is that glass at the end of the day which comforts me after I find out the world is not this way -- none of us is so powerful.

I spend more time in the Byerly's wine store than you might think. No, it doesn't have the shop-on-the-corner charm of Hennepin-Lake or Solo Vino or Sam's. It doesn't have the breadth of Haskell's or Surdyk's. It isn't dirt cheap like Costco, World Market, or Trader Joe's. What it is is easy.

It's close to home, there's never a line. Plus I can do my banking, my grocery shopping, send a few packages and buy a few bottles all in one trip. Call it environmental awareness, call it laziness, call it what you will. The surprise -- for me, at least -- is that Byerly's stocks some excellent, affordable wines.

Granted, you may have to look to find them. Last time I was at there, they had a great pyramid of Castle Rock Pinot Noir right up front. This wine is syrupy and foul. I'd far rather decant a bottle of Benadryl with my evening meal. And yet. . . .I discovered one of my favorites of the last year at Byerly's: the Abbaye de Tholomies Minervois.

While shopping over the weekend, I ran into Bill Belkin, the category manager of wines & spirits at Lund Food Holdings, Inc. (owner of Byerly's, as of the acquisition ten years ago) and a rather garrulous guy. Within moments he had waxed on about the new Coen brothers film (he's a BIG fan), my husband's resemblance to Josh Brolin, and an FM-107 Lori & Julia segment he'd participated in on MILFs (which I would rather not define here -- if you don't know what they are, please Google; you'll get an eyeful).

Then he recommended the Bouchard Aînés & Fils Bourgogne Pinot Noir 2005, calling it a "really great turkey day wine."

Now, a man that forthcoming, you assume he's either totally honest or off his meds. I opted to trust Belkin, and I'm very glad I did. This pinot noir is pretty perfect for a holiday celebration involving several generations and levels of wine-drinking zeal. It has a bright fruit flavor with just a tiny bit of eucalyptus (a combination of oak and mint), a light mouthfeel, and a kirsch-soaked finish that stops short and relatively clean.

Not only is it a good match for turkey -- hearty enough to stand up to the stuffing and dark meat, but delicate enough to complement the white -- it's that grape that everyone in America has loved since Paul Giamatti's swooning ode to it in Sideways:

"It's a hard grape to grow, as you know. Right? It's uh, it's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's, you know, it's not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and uh, thrive even when it's neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention. You know? And in fact it can only grow in these really specific, little, tucked away corners of the world. And, and only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot's potential can then coax it into its fullest expression. Then, I mean, oh its flavors, they're just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and... ancient on the planet."

I'm not telling you the Bouchard Aînés & Fils is the "fullest expression" of a pinot noir. But for $13 a bottle (and a rather meaty alcohol content of 12.5%), what can you expect? This is a very drinkable, universally appealing, and versatile wine. And you don't have to take my word for it. Mr. Belkin of Byerly's — fan of independent film and MILFs everywhere — says so.

For the record, this winemaker also produces a masterful Pouilly-Fuissé that's quite a bit pricier and much harder to find. . . .but it's well worth the effort if you also want to offer a white at your table as well.