On consecutive nights, 2006 Bea Pagliaro and 2006 Bea Pipparello. Both showing elegant aromas, decent enough acidity, substantial 14% mouth weight, strong but unaggressive tannins. I liked the readier Pipparello - a blend of 60% Sangiovese, 25% Montepulciano and 15% Sagrantino - better than the Pagliaro, 100% Sagrantino and 25% pricier. However, despite nothing structurally or aromatically wrong with both, there was a general sense of a robust self-sufficiency, of little interest in meshing with food.
All this to say that at times like these (and others, of course), I wish I had Joe standing across the 66 Leonard counter to ask if he shared my perplexity at this or that producer being such a star of the natural wine welt; if he shared my sense that these two wines in particular didn't sit comfortably within even the imprecise margins of the disorderly esthetic (a fatal flaw, of course); most basically, if he agreed with me that these were not, ultimately, what "we" wanted in a wine.
Because Joe had gone through a phase of heavier wines in the 1990s (I am thinking of the exquisite but ultimately solipsistic smaragds, and perhaps some of the heavier Italians) and might have revised that position. Because Joe had, in depth, the four vectors of the ideal super-ego: intelligence, knowledge, experience, and discernment. These four nouns may read like a grocery list of clichés, but not if you really stop to think about what each of them means. Although I would have preferred to drink with Joe some wine that brought us joy, he was THE guy you'd want to be sharing your impressions with if your broadside needed housebreaking, if your quarrel required equal measures of scientific knowledge and freedom from reductionist impulses.
So, I wish I were drinking these Beas with Joe, so I could remark with disguised self-satisfaction that I am growing less and less interested in the grandstanding Oscars for best actor, and seem to care only for the supporting roles. He could stoke or smother the value of that pulsion; the first would be more welcome than the second, but either would be valuable.
