A 100 point moment – wine in tropics edition
I’m in an undisclosed location where rum is cheaper than Yellow Tail.
We have the good fortune of being on a family vacation in the tropics. But what’s a wine lover to drink?
If you’ve read my book, A Year of Wine, you’ll know that I’m a fan of pairing wine with context, which includes the food, the mood, and the people. So if you’re on sun-drenched vacation, it’s easy to insert any wine, be it fetid or feted, and you’re bound for a great time since the setting is ideal, right? Perhaps. But this trip, I brought my own to make sure we had a good pairing.
Seeing some space in one of our bags, I threw in three wines from the Loire: two bottles of Muscadet and a bottle of Gamay. Low in alcohol, with refreshing acidity, and all under $15, I thought they would do the trick nicely when we grew tired of umbrella drinks and beer. (You can tell I am a wine geek since I was probably the only one bringing alcohol to the islands as opposed to returning with bottles–although I don’t rule that out.) I put them in a three-bottle wine shipper and they were still refreshingly cool to the touch when I unpacked. So I kept them that way by putting them all in the fridge on arrival.
The real stand out was the Domaine de la Pepiere, Clos des Briords, 2007 (about $15; find this wine), a superb wine in its own right that I’ve mentioned before. Throw in a sunset, 80 degrees, grilled fish, family and you really have a perfect wine moment. I rate it 100 points.
What’s one of your 100 point wine moments?
On April 8th, 2009 at 10:26 am ,Lyman Dally wrote:
My wife and I took a tour thru’ Tuscany a few weeks after 9/11. We visited an old tower in a hilltop town called Radicofani. Before we explored the old ruin we stopped into a small restaurant at the foot of the ruin. There we had a simple seafood dish and the “house wine”. It was $3 a bottle (this was before the Euro). What a fantastic heavy, earthy wine it was; more like a primitivo than a standard sangiovisi. I wish I could’ave taken a case home.
On April 8th, 2009 at 1:12 pm ,winechick wrote:
Like Lyman, my moment was also in Tuscany, in early summer of 2003. We were staying at I Parigi, a hilltop B&B overlooking the town of Florence across the road from a monastery. The sun was setting, the bells from the monastery were ringing, and we were enjoying the owner’s own Chianti with some cheese we had brought with us from Piedmont with some local bread. A sublime experience which I hope will not be a once in a life time event.
On April 8th, 2009 at 4:45 pm ,lars wrote:
Peso da Regua, Portugal. On a much needed vacation, I enjoyed a simple meal with a friend at a local churasquera. Lunch was 5 euros a person and the wine was 2 Euros a bottle. I will never forget this meal for its simplicity and the friendly and helpful service. The owner pulled out a map and planned our wine tasting tour for the weekend with the help of the other servers. Probably the best wine experience of my life…at a personal cost of 7 Euros.
On April 8th, 2009 at 6:50 pm ,Dylan wrote:
It was actually at a graduation dinner for college. I was surrounded by my own family, my closest friends and their families. There was food and wine abound, and it was excellent–a moment filled with high spirits and celebration. But, to tell the truth, any decent wine might have tasted great in that moment.
On April 9th, 2009 at 7:52 am ,Carlos Silveira wrote:
What about drinking local (“when in Rome do as the Romans do” etc.), what about the carbon footprint of your wines?
On April 9th, 2009 at 5:24 pm ,Jack wrote:
Like Lyman, my moment was also in Tuscany, in early summer of 2003. We were staying at I Parigi, a hilltop B&B overlooking the town of Florence across the road from a monastery. The sun was setting, the bells from the monastery were ringing, and we were enjoying the owner’s own Chianti with some cheese we had brought with us from Piedmont with some local bread. A sublime experience which I hope will not be a once in a life time event.
On April 10th, 2009 at 11:18 am ,Wine-on-the-Way wrote:
What a great photograph. Looks like the Virgin Islands? (Rum is certainly cheaper than wine there!) If only we could close our eyes and let our imagination run free everytime when drinking wine. I recommend pairing spring barbeques and Shiraz…sublime (to quote Jack).
On April 11th, 2009 at 10:50 am ,Al wrote:
Staying at Cain Cellars with friends drinking 85 Cain 5 while watching the sun go down behind us and the shadows lengthen below us in Napa (over 20 years ago).