Brad Widelock
Brad Widelock
The second summer of our marriage, my wife and I took a road trip to Point No Point on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island. It’s the most relaxing place I have ever been. There was no phones or television in the cabin. The sound of the ocean was all around us, our personal soundtrack. To encourage my growing interest in wine, Francie brought some wines books for me to read on the trip. (She now regrets this. Whenever I can’t find something I’m certain I’ve read in one my books, she asks “Why don’t you look in the index under Minutia, trivial?”) One of them was Kermit Lynch’s Adventures on the Wine Route. When we got home, I went to KLWM looking for some of the wines I’d read about in the book. Much to my surprise, there were no bottles of Chave’s Hermitage or Raveneau’s Chablis for me to purchase. Even if there were, I could not have afforded them. Fortunately there were some less expensive wines in stock.
That day I bought four bottles of the Serpentières, four of the 2002 Ch“teau d’ Epiré Savennières and a single bottle of Faraud’s Gigondas. I had never tried any wines like these before, and I wasn’t quite sure how they were supposed to taste or when to drink them. I was told that they would cellar for at least ten years. After I got home I started to feel a little foolish, like I was one of Barnum’s suckers, so I opened up one of the Savennières and I loved the crisp apple quality, but what I really wanted to experience was what I had read about, the beauty of a wine transformed by age. I realized I would probably never know what an older bottle of wine tasted like unless I were willing to age it myself, so I decided to put the bottles down in my newly rented wine locker. Last week for my birthday I opened up my first bottle of the 2002 Serpentières and my second bottle of the Savennières. I don’t have a lot of basis for comparison, but I think these wines are terrific. Since that first trip to KLWM I have had the opportunity to taste and purchase some older wines (like some Edmunds St. John I recently picked up), and considerably expand my European wine horizons through the good work of other importers (read: Joe Dressner, Oliver McCrum, Bill Mayer, José Pastor et al.). I still don’t have enough experience to make any pronouncements about older bottles of Burgundy (or any other wines, for that matter), but I know I like putting wine down, and seeing what happens.
Brad
That day I bought four bottles of the Serpentières, four of the 2002 Ch“teau d’ Epiré Savennières and a single bottle of Faraud’s Gigondas. I had never tried any wines like these before, and I wasn’t quite sure how they were supposed to taste or when to drink them. I was told that they would cellar for at least ten years. After I got home I started to feel a little foolish, like I was one of Barnum’s suckers, so I opened up one of the Savennières and I loved the crisp apple quality, but what I really wanted to experience was what I had read about, the beauty of a wine transformed by age. I realized I would probably never know what an older bottle of wine tasted like unless I were willing to age it myself, so I decided to put the bottles down in my newly rented wine locker. Last week for my birthday I opened up my first bottle of the 2002 Serpentières and my second bottle of the Savennières. I don’t have a lot of basis for comparison, but I think these wines are terrific. Since that first trip to KLWM I have had the opportunity to taste and purchase some older wines (like some Edmunds St. John I recently picked up), and considerably expand my European wine horizons through the good work of other importers (read: Joe Dressner, Oliver McCrum, Bill Mayer, José Pastor et al.). I still don’t have enough experience to make any pronouncements about older bottles of Burgundy (or any other wines, for that matter), but I know I like putting wine down, and seeing what happens.
Brad
