Think "Snakes on a Plane". And why? Because one of the rose wines below from last night's monthly meeting of the Dorks of York caused me to tell the story of a long ago camping trip, after which the tag line "fuckers on a boat" became the phrase that everybody, including the people who would otherwise never use that word, found a way to work into a sentence at least once while we drained the bottles. (This group passes the bottles for tiny pours, then later we go back and revisit our favorites.) For the story, read on.
1) Gabe pushes this bottle out. I see pink, but all I taste is milky malo and alcohol. Little fruit to speak of. It's the 2009 Saintsbury Vin Gris. Nobody cares for it.
2) I jump in with one of mine. It's fresh and minerally, with faint herbs and strawberry powder, like something you'd stir into milk. Clean and crisp. Gabe surprises me by thinking it's more likely to be new world than old. He's wrong: 2010 Charvin Cotes du Rhone.
3) Buoyed by the old/new world debate on that wine, I push out another of mine. Vitamin B on the nose, good depth, cherrry fruit, rich in a way no one can put their finger on. Most are sure it's old world, but there are some hold outs. And in fact it's a Grenache, Syrah and Cinsault blend from Washington's most-European styled producer, Delille, under their Doyenne label. It didn't hold onto the old world character from last summer when I bought it as much as I had hoped it would; had it, it would have been an interesting contest with the Charvin--I really don't think anyone would have pegged it as New World.
4) This one's different! Super-pale. Cinnamon and pear, salty sea spray. If I were tasting this blind, I'd think I was drinking pinot grigio. Interesting. 2010 Close des Lumieres Cotes du Rhone.
5) Now we're getting pink grapefruit on the nose and guava on the palate, but there's also a broad spectrum of flavors besides that we couldn't quite put a name to. It reminds me of last year's Tempier, but with a little more tropicality. It's outstanding. And we all go "no wonder" when it's unveiled: 2010 La Galantin, Bandol.
6) So here comes my last wine, that which evoked the title of this post, which I love but am very nervous about. It's a dead ringer for the first rose I ever tasted, and which I loved and can remember like it was yesterday. It was a cabernet rose by a Santa Barbara area producer called Ballard Canyon who no longer exists. And I'm nervous because I think that my emotional connection predisposes me to be blind to it's faults--after all, I not only wasn't into wine back then I was barely legal, and very few of the wines I found appealing then would appeal to me now. Plus this group solidly prefers European wines. But here are those flavors from long ago: sawdust, red rose petals, light tobacco note, unsalted butter, and even more sawdust. To my shock and surprise, everybody goes gaga over it, and it was either flat-out WOTN or co-WOTN with the Bandol above for every person present. Let me tell you, jaws dropped when the wine turned out to be a Canadian wine and from cabernet: 2010 Church and State, Okanagan Valley.
It was then I told the story, which is really not going to come out well in the cold light of day, but here goes: I was only 20 or 21, and on my first-ever camping trip with my ten-years-older soon to be husband. I was an old soul in a lot of ways but very naive about a lot of things, and did not understand (yet) that for my ex the whole purpose of camping was to be able to start drinking beer right after breakfast and not have to make any excuses about it. He'd pop a can and then park himself in a folding armchair with some spy novel for the rest of the day. I passed most of my time during our three day stay there hiking about and catching crawdads on the beach below our ridgeline campsite. There weren't a lot of other people around, but there was this group of hot young guys cruising the lake in a very souped-up power boat with a black and silver paint job. For Rich it was hate at first sight, mostly because they were hot young guys with souped up power boat, and having nothing else to do he fixated on their presence. The tirades about "those f*ckers" got longer and more tiring with each day and each can of beer. By the third day I couldn't get away from him fast enough, and so when those "f*ckers" got close enough to a shore I happened to be walking on and offered me a ride, I happily accepted and swam over to their boat. I guess I was gone long enough that Rich came looking for me, and I still remember seeing him scowling on that ridgeline with his hands angrily planted on his hips, scanning the beach and trying to ignore the boat and it's passengers whooping and waving as they zoomed past--until he realized that this time one of the "f*ckers" was me.
Anyway, there was a little camp market where I bought the bottle of the Ballard Canyon for myself--those were pretty long evenings after sunset with just an angry drunk for company. I was only learning to like wine about then, but I liked that one better than any I'd tasted before it and never ran into another quite like it until I tasted that Church & State.
Now John puts another one of his wines out:
7) Pale and odd. Rotting vegetables and alka seltzer, a slight spritz. Thought it was a heat-affected bottle of that Basque wine with all the t's and x's in the name, but it turned out to be Austrian, a 2010 Bichof Pratsch. Probably a rogue secondary fermentation. When asked what he thought of his own wine, John opined with disgust that "someone should put this f*cker on a boat". And that started the way I shall always, and fondly, remember last night.
8 ) Severe and lean, not oxidated and obviously young but with a note not unlike sherry and what I often find and dislike in Tavel. And it is one, the 2010 Chateau de Marissy Cuvee des Lys. No one else was very excited about it, either. All by itself and with a meal it would have been very good or better, but for sipping and in a group where it's compared to standouts like the Galantin and Church & State, it didn't stand a chance.
