The Rake Magazine

Remember those days when you would wait for your parents to leave the house so you could invite your girl- or boyfriend over for an evening of videos and cheap wine and illicit sex?

Well, here's a funny thing. Those days return, when you're 42 or so. . . .You discover there's a Friday evening coming up. The kids are going to be out -- one at a sleepover, the other doing whatever high school seniors do -- and you plot. You get a DVD from Hollywood and a cheap bottle of wine and think about how you're going to have the house all to yourself.

Ah. . . .the romance of middle age.

My husband and I recently ran into just such a Friday night. Teenage daughter at a friend's house; adult son out for most of the night. We ran out to rent a film we'd been wanting to see ever since it hit Uptown for about ten minutes last winter then disappeared and opened a bottle of Tiziano Chianti 2005.

The film was called Starting Out in the Evening, a sleeper from 2007 that sprang from a book by Brian Morton, whose entire canon I happen to have read.

Morton is a fascinating writer. Around 50, Jewish, a New Yorker. He clearly has some personal demons to excise. Each of his books covers much the same ground: There is some combination of an older, Jewish, intellectual writer -- a contemporary of Bellow's and Roth's -- a 40-ish woman who is grappling with her desire to have children, a leftist, and an aged but understanding therapist. Morton is, in my experience, the most formulaic writer on the planet today. Yet what he produces is at once readable and fresh. Each time he enters the same territory he has something strangely new to say. He comes at it from a different facet. He makes this single story work, over and over again.

So it is with this film. It's the story of a 70-year-old novelist (Frank Langella) whose books have all fallen out of print. He is trying to finish that one last novel that will become his legacy when a graduate student (Lauren Ambrose of Six Feet Under fame) appears at his door to tell him she is writing her thesis about his body of work. Meanwhile, his daughter and -- for all intents and purposes -- best friend, played by Lily Taylor, is turning 40 and debating whether or not to trick her childless-by-choice boyfriend into an "accidental" baby.

There were rumors Langella would be nominated for an Academy Award for Starting Out, and I think it's a shame he was not. He is a burly, bullet-shaped elderly man, yet he managed to turn from obdurate to frail after his character suffered a stroke. The scene in which his daughter's boyfriend must haul the old man out of the bathtub -- chest to chest, dripping wet; in some way getting the "child" he was so determined never to have -- was worth an Oscar nomination alone.

But back to the evening, OUR evening and the wine. Chianti generally is made out of Sangiovese grapes. It is the cousin of other richer Tuscan reds, such as Montepulciano and Carmignano. But Chianti tends to be smooth and forgettable -- a thin table wine with no real character.

This one, however, blew me away -- especially for the price, which is around $9 a bottle. Sweet strawberry and honey married with a sturdy, dry, deep forest oak, it's a light but sophisticated wine. A perfect match for the quiet, poignant film. Exactly right for two exhausted parents grateful simply to be sprawled across each other like puppies in a large chair, drinking in the quiet on a Friday night.

Back in late 2007, I wrote a blog post called The Seventh Sign: $30 Chianti about a predicted rise in the price of European wines. According to the New York Times, the hike was supposed to hit in three to five months. Right about. . . .now.

The exchange rate, oil prices, global economic turmoil: all the factors are there. But so far as I can see, wine inflation just isn't happening. At least not yet.

As of April 2008, I'm buying the same French, Spanish, and Italian wines I was buying a year ago, for roughly the same amount of money. Low end to high end, everything wine-wise seems stable. Which is, frankly, puzzling to me. . . .because everything else is going up. Gasoline is averaging $3.60 per gallon nationwide. And food prices are going up in a corresponding fashion: milk is up to $4 a gallon and the cost of eggs has risen a staggering 40 percent.

Perhaps it's time to stop buying such frippery. Omelets! Who needs 'em? Especially when you can get a decent bottle of Borja Borsao shipped to you all the way from the sun-kissed Spain for $5.95.

You see, in addition to the weird and inexplicable stability of the imported wine market, Haskell's is running its legendary nickel sale until Saturday, May 3. This used to mean that they offered customers one bottle at full price and the second for a nickel. Today, it's more complicated. But basically, it boils down to this: Everything in their 10 Twin Cities stores that has a yellow sign is 30 to 50 percent off. And I spent enough time in the Minnetonka location today to attest, these deals run both long and deep.

I picked up four bottles for under $7 apiece (including, by the way, a very nice chianti). But there were deals on the higher-priced items as well: Really nice 2005 Bordeaux in the $40 range, a Pouilly-Fuisse for $25. And the really quality wines, those typically in the $250 bracket, are going for about $175.

It's a strange world we live in, where it's cheaper to drink fine French wine than to take a Sunday evening drive or heat the water for a long shower or feed an infant. But this is the reality, folks. So we might as well make the best of it. If wine is the only inexpensive luxury that remains — and the only thing merchants are willing to sell at a fair market price — I say go for it. Buy the really good stuff and enjoy.

In fact, if you stop by Haskell's before this weekend, you may pay less per ounce for your wine than you do for the fuel you use to get there. Ironic, isn't it?

So it seems the kids from Fame (who, by the way, are now eligible for AARP) have gotten together with Cyndi Lauper and a couple writers from the early days of Saturday Night Live to adapt Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Guthrie.

That, and I suppose Joe Dowling had a hand in it, too.

This is a wild, colorful, aggressively sexual production. And by that, I don't mean sexy. "Sexy," to me, is nuanced and flirtatious, suggestive, tempting, a little bit hidden. Sexual is in your face. It's full frontal, bumping and grinding. It's Ground Zero. It's Rich Goldsmith's headlines. It's Namir Smallwood's Puck in a glittering coral codpiece.

This is not to say I didn't like the play. There were wonderful dance numbers, great (skimpy) costumes, and a fabulous sparkly egg in which Titania and Bottom the ass get it on. I enjoyed the Guthrie's production for what it was: grand spectacle.

But I did miss the air of sweetness and optimism that typically wafts through Midsummer Night's Dream. This is a play I associate with whimsy and tentative romance and the suspension of disbelief. It is, in my experience (which involves seeing it perhaps five other times on stages including the former Guthrie's and studying it in Stratford-upon-Avon) a story about the mischievous yet goodnatured spirit world that helps guide the loves and lives of mortals. It contains a play within a play — which was executed beautifully in the Guthrie's current production as wry slapstick — and a layering of comical missed chances, magic, and a sense that everyone will be rightfully paired in the end.

Contrast that with Dowling's modern vision: An alien landscape in which sci-fi fairies drop from the sky and prod underwear-clad couples to lurch from love to lust and back to love again.

If you go for this sort of thing, I urge you to see it and stop by Cue on your way up for a glass of Flor de Pingus 2005. This Spanish red from the Ribera del Duero region is fruity and floral on the nose. But it tastes completely different than it smells: earthy, plummy, and HOT. I mean, this wine scorches on the way down your throat; it's dry on the tongue, and the finish is pure whisky.

Flor de Pingus is like a well-built Spanish guy in tight leather. . . .You know, someone old enough to know what he's doing but young enough to do it well. At 14.8% alcohol and a little more than $100 a bottle, it costs about the same as two tickets to the show.

But this wine is really sexy, not just sexual. It has shades and nuances, and an impish, spiritual gleam. Which is, if you ask me, well worth the price of admission.

It is true that I drink wine nearly every day. But recently, I went three days without. . . .very purposefully. It was less a personal decision than a public parenting demonstration. Alcohol is not a necessity. I only hope it worked.

I was in Madison, Wisconsin, with my middle child, Max — 18 years old this week — who has been accepted to the university for fall. This was my birthday gift to him: a weekend in a hotel in the town where he will soon be living, a tour of the local restaurants, a shopping spree for Badger gear.

We shared a hotel room to minimize costs. And he was courtly and careful, changing in the bathroom and muting the volume on the televised basketball game he was watching when I wanted to go to sleep. I, in turn, tried to tone down my female-isms and Mom impulses. I dealt with being sweaty after the two-hour campus tour and wore no makeup and ate tabbouleh for breakfast when that's what he craved.

And I decided not to buy wine at night.

When I travel with my husband, it's a sacred ritual: that bottle from a local wine shop that we open with our travel corkscrew and drink out of Lucite "glasses" in our room. But traveling alone with my underage son — in a town that I'm growing to love, but where I saw people drinking beer, A LOT OF PEOPLE DRINKING BEER, for breakfast — it just didn't seem right.

One of my greatest concerns about Max's leaving for a Big 10 school is the alcohol element. I know, as a college professor, that drinking begins on Thursday night and continues, pretty much unabated, through every weekend. Home games are an excuse for alumni to come into town and "tailgate," which means sitting in a parking lot and cracking open a Budweiser at 8 a.m.

So it just didn't feel right to me to comb the streets of Madison for a liquor store and buy cheap wine and schlep it back to the hotel room. Mom with the monkey on her back. Instead, I got us a six-pack of mineral water to keep in our mini-fridge and share.

It was a wonderful weekend. Max got comfortable in the place that will be his home for the next four years. He caught a wave of school spirit (the Badger scrubs clinched the deal, I think). And he seemed even to be excited about school itself: the massive biology building, the lakeside Union, the main library where he logged in with his student ID and discovered he already has an account.

It was only after we arrived home that the reality hit me. This kid is leaving.

Technically, Max is my younger son. But because his older brother has autism and his father left when he was nine, Max has aways straddled a strange role. He's been protector and consultant and cook. At 10, he made a Thanksgiving turkey. At 17, he stood by his catatonic brother's hospital bed at Mayo and debated the risks and benefits of electroshock. He has been my mainstay, my rock, my comic relief. And now, I have to let him leave.

It's a little like tearing off a foot-long strip of my own skin. Which is why I insisted he go to an out-of-state school-- because I wanted too badly for him to stay close to home.

Sunday night, around the time I was realizing all this, my husband opened a bottle of Domaine Bouchard Pere & Fils Beaune de Chateau Premier Cru 2005 that we'd been saving for a time of need. Pure pinot noir from Burgundy, this wine is silky and deceptive. It feels light in the mouth, nearly sweet and purely fruity at first. But then there is a streak of oaky dryness that runs straight down the tongue and lasts for a long, long time. This makes it incredibly easy to drink but satisfying. Perfect alone. Even better with food.

Me? I wasn't in the mood to eat. Only to drink my wine and mull the four months I have left with this large, serious, clever boy. The dry spell was over. But it was worth every abstinent minute. And more.

What you drink from matters. No question.

Good coffee will be ruined by a Styrofoam, waxed, or plastic vessel (and here, I include all those plastiform travel mugs distributed by SA). Water leaches toxins from petroleum-based bottles. Anything out of an aluminum can tastes like. . . .aluminum can. Chunky little Chinese bowl cups somehow make tea taste better. Wide cappuccino mugs with plenty of room for foam are a must. And decent wine glasses do improve the wine drinking experience.

To a point.

Take it from me, a woman who sat through most of a demonstration staged last night at Solera, by the legendary stemware producer Georg Riedel (pronounced REE-dle, rhymes with needle). I left early -- truth -- because I had a conference for one of my kids. But I was glad to go. For 45 minutes, we'd been swirling, pouring, sniffing, and experimenting with three nice wines and five different "glasses" (explanation of quotes below) and I was rather tired of the process. It was a little Montessori and, frankly, sucked every ounce of enjoyment from the experience of simply drinking the wine.

Georg is the 10th generation principal of his family's Austrian glass-blowing business. They actually started, back in the mid-1700's, making windows. But after World War 2, the Riedel family was forced out of their native Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). And in 1957, Georg's father, Claus, had an opportunity to buy a business that made high-quality stemware. But rather than just carry on in the tradition of the company — making glasses that were aesthetically pleasing or in keeping with current decor — Claus came up with a whole new paradigm.

He developed what his son — Georg — calls "the concept." Simply put: that the size and shape of a glass matter when it comes to drinking wine.

I don't know about Claus, but Georg is a born salesman. And by this I mean, he can make it seem imperative that you have what he sells. He's canny. Self deprecating. He talks about how he "complicates" the lives of the people he meets by alerting them to their need for better wine glasses. How clever is that? He cops to the fact that he is adding a layer of cost and effort onto what is for most of us a simple, pleasant pursuit. And yet, he manages to make this sound like a gift!

During yesterday's presentation, Riedel the 10th was suave in a very European high-buttoned coat. He warned us charmingly (he nearly won me over with this) about the volume of wine we were about to drink and cautioned drivers against over-indulging. He talked about the rising alcohol content of wines and the unfortunate practice of chaptalizing (adding sugar during fermentation) that has become standard because modern drinkers seem to want ever bolder and bigger wines.

He told us that the word "flavor" actually means the combination of smell and taste. This is only marginally accurate. It is one definition (third on the list in most dictionaries). But I'm willing to give him credit, given that the sensory experiences (smell and taste) certainly are connected where wine is concerned. And I, for instance, am a person more reliant upon the former than the latter.

"In every handmade glass is the breath of a human being," Georg said. And I have to admit, I swooned.

But then, we were led through a complicated dance that involved tasting white wine from a Riedel Chardonnay glass, then from a plastic cup, and then from a cheap, wide-mouthed glass. And this is where Georg lost me.

Of course, the wine tasted awful from the plastic cup. There were, to my mind, many reasons. Plastic has an odor, even a distinct taste. It's flimsy and unsatisfying to hold. I associate it with keg parties and hospital water jugs. However, Georg Riedel insisted the only problem with the plastic cup was that its mouth was too narrow to allow for proper aromatics.

Once we'd poured the wine into the wide-mouthed glass, we were instructed to sip again. And here, he told us there was just too MUCH aroma escaping, it wasn't being funneled to the nose properly. This, too, he said, ruined the wine. All around me, I saw heads nodding.

But I was thinking, Balderdash. (Actually, I was thinking something else, but this is a word more in keeping with the refinement of Riedel.)

After the white wine had been swirled, poured, and disposed of, we started in on the red. This was served in a Riedel Burgundy glass — a beautiful, bulbous thing (in the middle above) that Georg told us is large enough to hold a bottle and a half. Now, put aside the risks inherent in giving people glasses so large that a moderate serving of wine looks like a pathetic dribble. The fact is, we drank a lovely French pinot noir from the Burgundy glass and it was very nice.

Then, we were told to pour our Burgundy into the Chardonnay glass — which Georg told us is similar to many other manufacturers' red wine glasses — and take a sip. "Do you taste that? It's too acidic!" Georg cried out, and the people around me were nearly weeping with gratitude as if someone had finally confirmed what they always knew. Stemware really does matter! Hallelujah!!

I, on the other hand, drank my Burgundy from the wrong glass and I thought it was just fine. . . .except for the little bit of white wine residue.

There are many things I love about Riedel stemware. It is lovely and stately and makes a thrilling sound when you clink in toast. I've no doubt it improves wine marginally (marginally!) to be able to stick one's entire nose in the glass. It's on sale at Target, for God's sake, where you can get two bottom-of-the-line glasses for $25-30, which is not, actually a bad deal. But I do not believe, nor have I seen any evidence, that the average wine drinker must buy a different shaped glass for every varietal he or she may drink.

As I said, a master salesman is someone who comes up with a product and convinces you that you absolutely must have it. He is the emperor who convinces you he is well dressed when he appears stark naked. Or, in the case of Georg Riedel — who has some very good points to make among all the flim-flam and twirling fire — a pair of boxers and maybe a couple woolen socks.