Sharon Bowman

The silence of the drams  

I have had so many memorable wines of late that I have felt somehow cornered into silence. How to choose! How to talk about them!

But it’s important to talk about them, of course – to get their texture and weave, to remember that morning you woke up with a curious aftertaste of 1983 Domaine de Chevalier Graves on your palate and puzzled over its gorgeous gravel before falling back to sleep for a little.

Or how you chased down a snappy NV Pierre Peters with a thick, heady pour of 2003 Radikon Jakot while stabbing bread into a dish of olive oil.

Or the awesome, yeasty surprise of 2000 Lassaigne Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature, which wore zero dosage with mastery and beckoned, and beckoned, and beckoned to have more of itself poured into your glass.

I want to talk about all of those things. The 2007 Dashe L’Enfant Terrible, still as nervy and peculiar and succulent as ever. The 2006 Lapierre Morgon with its silky langorousness swirling through the tastebuds. The 1998 López de Heredia Tondonia Rosado that starts out oxidized and then tightens into a dazzling burst of fruit and flowers. The floozily sappy 2006 Richaud Cairanne, the exquisite, tangled and complex 2005 Texier Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc and crackling NV Peillot Montaigneux Brut.

Not writing about them creates the danger of forgetting them. And these are wines I don’t want to forget.

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* Sharon Bowman,
pisarka, znawczyni wina.