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IN VINO VERITAS Fine Wine Writing by Jonathon Alsop
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Freedom From Wine Wine, Thanksgiving, and the American character... November 20, 2006 Rockwell was an iconist, a painter of American life scenes that were at first pungently familiar to one great semi-midwestern Anglophile swath of the public and eventually grew to represent quintessential hometown America to everyone else who gazed upon them, the 321 Saturday Evening Post covers especially. Rockwell explored slightly too intimate private moments in Crackers In Bed. Watershed events were a favorite theme: Prom Dress and Breaking Home Ties capture authentic lives at turning points. The good-natured aw-shucks civil disobedience of Happy Birthday Miss Jones is leavened considerably by the realization that the well-behaved third graders who scrawled "Happy Birthday Jonesy" on the blackboard in 1956 were Summer Of Love hippies-in-waiting, at least some of them. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrapped up his state of the union address in January 1941 with a powerful rhetorical flourish, a passionate expression of his vision of a world organized around freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Although we were not technically fighting World War Two yet, this freedom quatrain was used within the year to explain why we fought, once we were in it. In 1943, Rockwell published a series of paintings called The Four Freedoms, his most focused, affecting, and thoughtful work yet. I am no art critic, but I have a problem with painting number three, Freedom From Want. Rockwell rendered a Thanksgiving archetype so powerful that to this day, people who can't cook a chicken leg take it upon themselves to roast an entire turkey. Yet there is not a single glass of wine within a hundred miles of his Thanksgiving table. Instead, everyone's glass is full of fresh, clear, clean American water, probably tap water. There are eight of them: exactly what you are supposed to drink every day. Crazy Uncle Nut in the lower right corner, staring right into the camera as it were, looks like he might have been into something a little stronger before the dinner bell rang. Little Sister on the left flashes an impish grin down the table as if to ask, "Wonder what Granny left in the turkey this year?" Besides the mammoth bird, you can see pickles, a plate of celery, a Jello mold, even a bunch of grapes tauntingly in the foreground, but the family is otherwise wine free and apparently loving it. Imagine, pointlessly, what Rockwell would have done for Thanksgiving--and wine--if Freedom From Want had pictured two water glasses and five glasses of wine, two white and three red (Uncle Nut's tequila shot glass optional). Thanksgiving is our national ceremonial meal, after all, and wine would benefit immensely if even part of the energy and enthusiasm that people put into special ordering and deep-frying turkeys also went into special-ordering Thanksgiving wine. Rockwell's art is still a substantial commercial business today (Homecoming Soldier sold for $9.2 million in 2006) so maybe it would be worthwhile to insert wine digitally into the image. On My Table 2005 Yalumba Viognier (about $12, available almost everywhere, imported by Negociants USA, 707-259-0993) Even by "new world" wine standards, the grape named viognier (vee'o-NYAY) is new to the game. Back home in France, it occupies a little more than a hundred hectares in the northern Rhone valley, forgotten and hemmed in by better reds all around. Yalumba has dabbled in Australian viognier for a long time, ever since then-winemaker Peter Wall got hooked in the 70s while traveling through Condrieu in France. Yalumba planted its first viognier in 1980, and today the wine is a real bargain in a market that seems hesitant to appreciate the hard-to-pronounce viognier. This wine represents a great balance between flavor and texture. Fresh fruit and citrus flavors are bright, clean and a little bracing, and there's an underlying smooth roundness to the wine that makes it elegant and complete. Yalumba viognier is a fine, supremely affordable type-O white wine: it will go with practically any food. 2005 Folie a Deux "Menage a Trois" Blanc (about $12, owned by Trinchero Family Estates and distributed nationally, 800-473-4454) It would be natural enough to save this wine for Valentine's Day. Menage a Trois is so ripe and fruit-filled though that I think it could be a great choice with a giant roast turkey. It works in the same way riesling and gewurztraminer have worked in the past: instead of trying to complement flavors and get along, it stands on its own, interesting white wine with not-so-interesting white food. "Trois" refers to the three grapes that make up this delicious blend of half chardonnay, a third muscat canelli (a relatively rare, very spicy dessert wine grape), and the rest chenin blanc, all soft and fruity. Smells like fresh flowers and ripe honeydew melon, tastes almost sweet, like nectar. 2003 Willespie Verdelho (about $15, imported by Oz Pacific Wines, 978-265-8460) This exotic wine got my attention last spring when it knocked me out with layers of yummy tropical fruit and brisk, almost tannic acidity. It's still tasting great six months later, and my only anxiety is that we're going to drink it all up and not be able to get more. | |
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