You Will Never Be Able To Drink That Wine Again
The best bottle of wine I ever drank - the one that tasted so good that it broke my mind, the one that allowed me to realize that this rare and poignant pleasure could transcend tongue and taste buds - was a bottle of 2002 Santa Rita Hills single clone Pinot Noir. I discovered and tasted it in the early summer of 2004, a year that changed wine in California forever. I say that because this is not just a personal story of something that’s meaningful only to me. This is about mortality, and the way we all experience the things we love.
It happened in the Lincourt tasting room on Alamo Pintado Road in Santa Barbara County, but it was under the Foley label. Foley had purchased hundreds of acres in the Santa Rita Hills a few years prior, and had planted Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. He hadn’t yet built the Foley tasting room on Highway 246, though, so the first wines were showcased in his Lincourt tasting room, named for his daughters, in Santa Ynez. The small, newly built tasting room was closing soon. It was 4:45pm, and the man pouring for my friends and me had that end-of-shift focus blended with optimism. We were his last tasks for the day, he could see the light at the end of the tunnel. There was hope.
He tasted us through the line-up of wines, and then hepoured us a wine that would never now be served in a tasting room. This was awine that was made in such a small quantity, with such extra care and cost,that it would only be released to wine clubs today. But there was somethingspecial about tasting wine in Santa Barbara at that time in history.
This was before there was a Lompoc Wine Ghetto. This wasbefore there were 30+ tasting rooms in downtown Los Olivos. This was whentasting at Sanford meant driving out a lonely road to a little rustic shackmade of sticks and logs. This was 3 months before the movie Sideways was released in theaters.
If you weren’t into wine pre-Sideways, it may sound strange to use this movie as a touchstone intime for California, and possibly the global wine industry. But it was. As themovie found its way to audiences and then won awards through the winter andspring of 2004-05 and beyond, things began to change in Santa Barbara.
Once sleepy tasting rooms were suddenly over-run with gueststhirsty to taste the romantic elixir that is Pinot Noir. A Sideways wine trailwas mapped. A Sideways wine toursprang up. “As seen in Sideways” signscould be seen all over the county at locations that had been featured in themovie. Some of these things persist to this day, fifteen years later. You canbook a reservation today to stay at the Sideways Inn this weekend.
New wineries opened, and old wineries opened newer, biggertasting rooms. Sales growth was exponential. The typical winery owner who hadbeen well positioned before Sideways couldbe seen walking about in shell-shocked bliss, a weary but gleaming smile ontheir face, like someone who had won the lottery. Because they had.
Then the movement spread beyond Santa Barbara. Sideways launched a sharp increase of Pinot Noir sales from anywhere, while Merlot saw its sales drop over 40% in California and elsewhere. If you haven’t seen Sideways this won’t make sense, so maybe go watch it. I think an argument could be made that the advent of Sideways is second only to the Judgement of Paris in its impact on the wine industry, especially in California (leaving out natural disasters of globalization like phylloxera).
Santa Barbara would have eventually gotten to where it is now, I think. It would have taken many more years and a lot of concerted marketing efforts, but it is a beautiful landscape for wine tourism, excellent terroir for growing grapes, and the closest world-class wine area to the massive populations of Los Angeles and Southern California. So it was in some ways only a matter of time. But Sideways took it there in months.
On the other hand, I don’t think Pinot Noir would be thedominant grape variety that it is now. Sure, it would always be one of thenoble, popular grapes. Burgundy would always provide a classic benchmark. Butwould Pinot Noir have ascended to become second only to Cabernet in sales, andjust as much of a household name? I don’t think so.
Before all of that, though, there I was in a quaint littletasting room in quiet little Santa Barbara wine country. It was the last ofseveral tasting rooms I had visited during the day, without having to elbow myway through a throng of tipsy tasters, unaware that I stood at a precipice forboth my life personally and wine in general.
The tasting room attendant poured three other wines – aChardonnay, I’m sure, maybe a more generic Pinot – all of them have been forgotten. Becausethen he poured the wine that changed my life.
It was a 2002 Foley Pinot Noir, single clone 667 from Block5C. I later researched Block 5C and found that it was a small parcel, closestto the ocean and highest on the hills of the Foley estate in the Santa RitaHills. It inspired me to geek out. It made me want to know more about it.
But all of that obsession came later. In the moment I tastedit I was innocent, unschooled and untainted by wine knowledge, expectation, orbias. I tasted purely. Did it taste good to me? That was the preeminentquestion.
It did. Unquestionably. Undeniably. It tasted like the bestwine I had ever put in my mouth and swallowed.
But it cost $50 per bottle. The most I had ever spent on asingle bottle of wine up to that point in my life was probably significantlyless than $30. Yet for the first time in my life it suddenly seemed completelyworth it to spend this much money. I had to have more of that wine. I wanted torelive the experience of tasting it again and again.
“Would you like to revisit anything?” It was the first timeI heard those lovely, silly words that make greedily lapping up some extrabooze sound like taking a Learjet to a destination resort. In that moment I sawthe brilliance of this as a marketing technique. Without revisiting that wine,I may not have bought it. The frugal, rational side of my brain might have wonthe argument. But that extra taste gave me the opportunity to confirm just howdelicious it was.
“I’d like two bottles of that,” I declared. Yes, it was thatgood. So good that I doubled down on the most I had ever spent on a bottle ofwine.
He had to search to make sure there were actually twobottles left to sell to me. It was a very limited release, only available to mein that tasting room in that moment because Sidewayshadn’t yet hit theaters.
I don’t know how long I held onto those two bottles, but not very. Months at the most. I even paid corkage to open one at a fancy restaurant with a steak. I went to that restaurant only to have an occasion to open the wine. But I think I could have drunk it with anything.
Was the wine still as good as it was in the tasting room?Even better. I literally groaned with pleasure with each sip I took, noexaggeration.
And then it was gone. Forever.
I will never be able to taste it again.
Even if I could taste it, though, that wine may be goneforever in other ways. I’ve changed. My palate has changed. The wine wouldsurely have changed.
I chased that pleasure though, wanting to revisit it the wayall of us cling to the things we love. It’s so hard to let go, and pleasure isso fleeting. I tasted and collected wines obsessively, and tasted and collectedsome more. I immersed myself in learning about wine, and how that wine was madeand wondered if I could replicate that bottle, that experience. In a way, I’mstill chasing that thing that was so much sweeter because it wasconsumable. As Shakespeare put it:
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
People and wine are processes. We are not fixed things. Theidea of a self or a bottle of wine is an illusion. Fifteen years later I canlook back and see that wine as a discovery that redirected my energies andattentions to the point that I have now started a winery for which the firstwine that I’m making is a single clone 667 Pinot Noir from Block 16 in abeautiful organic vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills.
I hope my Pinot Noir is even better than that one I had backin 2004, but I also hope that I’m better. I hope I’ve learned not to take thismoment for granted, because another Sidewayscould be released next month and change it all forever. I hope I’ve learned notto take the things that I love – like wine – for granted either.
And that’s the secret to tasting wine that I’ll leave youwith. Forget everything else you’ve heard or been taught about how to properlytaste wine and just remember this:
Before taking that first sip whisper a silent reminder toyourself, “I will never be able to drink this wine again.”