2007 Jacques Puffeney Arbois Trousseau Cuvée Les Bérangères 13.0%
Whenever I fly from New York to São Paulo, I take a case and a half of wine in my checked luggage. The TSA invariably interprets the X-rays as meaning a case and a half of Howitzer shells, and opens my bags to check if there are any fruit bombs, leaving that pesky “Kilroy was here” slip that tells me they rifled through my things. This last time they outdid themselves. The unworldly agent in charge of ensuring my airborne security, mystified with the wax seal capsule on the Puffeney Trousseau, began to carve at it with some blunt object until reason put in a word.
Having some time ago decided to treat wax capsules as if they weren’t there, I make the usual mess over the sink and pour into bowl shaped Burgundy glasses. Liquid is aromatically awake, giving gobs of strawberry with delicate cloves and the sous bois that put the bois in Arbois. A message board colleague opened one of these a few days ago and it shut down after an hour, so we only have 50 minutes left to drink it. With gusto, we rise to the occasion, fall to the task at hand, remain level, slightly tilted. Light to medium body, tongue puckering and piercingly tart acidity, refreshing and delightfully painful, like icy seltzer scratching down your throat when you’re very thirsty. The aromas are all there in the taste, promises delivered. Perfect mix of light and dark, playfulness and seriousness, a spectrum of attitudes become form. I ♥ Trousseau. Out with a drum roll, paradiddle paean paradigm.
