Wine

I suspect that most readers, asked to name the most important red-wine grapes of Italy, would focus mainly on Nebbiolo, Barbera and Sangiovese, the most widely planted grape in Italy. Lovers of Sicily might also mention Nerello Mascalese and Nero D’Avola. What if I told you that some of the most spectacular wines in Italy were made from the Cabernets (Sauvignon and Franc) and Merlot? Have I gotten lost in the Médoc? No, I am in Tuscany, ancient home of the Etruscans, northwest of Rome. To be specific, I am in Bolgheri, a few miles from the Ligurian coast. On a clear day, if you cast your eyes south, you might just see Napoleon padding around the island of Elba plotting his escape. Everyone has heard of “Super Tuscans.” Not everyone knows the story of their origin.

Regular readers will recall my fondness for Lord Falkland’s observation that “when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.” That crisp declaration is not only elegantly framed but (in my view) true. In this it differs, it saddens me to acknowledge, from the Duke of Cambridge’s even more robust confidence that he was “opposed to all change, at any time, for whatever reason.” I am not sure whether that mot was a testimony to the duke’s utopian inclinations or merely his stubbornness. But it is sharply at odds with the realities, if not, perhaps, with the governing temperament, of most of its main actors in the world of wine.

There are some cramped, unimaginative people who — I have been told — maintain that writing about wine is a bootless enterprise. Even more extraordinary, I have heard it rumored that there exist unfortunate sods who believe that it is a waste of time to gather with friends over food and wine while discussing the events of the day, the state of the republic, the repair of one’s soul. Fortunately, neither you nor I are acquainted with any such freaks, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this column and I would not be sitting down to write it. At the end of his brief, tantalizing book The Educated Imagination, Northrop Frye, the great Canadian literary critic (do you sense a passing adumbration of contradiction there?

When someone says “Bordeaux wine” most of us think first of wines from the Médoc, home of Pauillac, Saint-Julien, Saint-Estèphe, Margaux and other celebrated names. For some reason — marketing prowess, perhaps — the great region of Pessac-Léognan, directly to the south in Graves, cheek by jowl with the town of Bordeaux, comes up mostly as an afterthought. This is both odd and regrettable. It is odd because, as a matter of history, Pessac-Léognan takes precedence. I suppose the story begins with the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to the future Henry II in 1152. Eleanor brought vast lands from that region of France to the marriage, so there is a sense in which the French wines the English have loved since the Middle Ages were originally English.

Just as night watchmen are constrained by duty to make their rounds, so are writers about wine. Sometimes the rounds are seasonal. Beaujolais Nouveau, for example, is released every year on the third Thursday of November at 12:01 a.m., just a few weeks after the September harvest. Gamay, the grape that makes Beaujolais, can be fresh, floral and ruby-like in this nymphet incarnation. Beaujolais Nouveau lacks the depth, succulence and complexity of more mature instances of Gamay — especially in Morgon and Côte du Py — but it is an agreeable, undemanding picnic wine that goes well with your preferred instantiation of déjeuner sur l’herbe.

Regular readers may recall the trip we took to St. Émilion on the right bank of the Gironde-Dordogne river system a while back. It being truffle season, some enterprising chaps organized a dinner revolving around that delectable fungus and one of the very best wines from St. Émilion, Château Angélus, a Premier Grand Cru Classé A, and its second label, Carillon d’Angélus. Note the bell motif: a single bell features on the label of Château Angélus, three on that of Carillon d’Angélus, so named because in the vineyards one can hear the bells from three neighboring churches ringing out that prayer to Mary (Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ...) in the morning, noon and around vespers. Those of you who were along for our last foray to St.