THREE WINES I DRANK THIS YEAR
I have to assume that the last year of my life has been guided by some freaky little cosmic force that I don’t know, yet has entrusted me anyway with so many beautiful experiences to deepen my love for wine.
At its core, wine is an agricultural product, and if you let it breathe for a second (and maybe you’re not drinking homogenized bulk wine found in the grocery store but I’m not judging!) you’ll find resonating in the bottle a whole story of land and its people. How fucking cool is it that we get to drink wine and in one bottle understand so much history: the choices that farmers and winemakers had to make in response to the climate and economic conditions, or maybe more importantly the choices they didn’t make in spite of what made conventional sense in order to pursue some supernatural sense of resilience and trust in their own God-given skill.
In the last six weeks I’ve met wine producers and had opportunities to dive into their stories from very privileged perspectives, and for that I’m grateful. Now I’m just gonna reflect on the other side of that product: what it’s like to drink it, and some of my favorite moments doing that this year.
The Christening of the Mount Pleasant Home
Virginia Coferment Tram-Cham-Bapple’ 2022
When I moved into my apartment perched at the top of Mount Pleasant in August I just got this sense that I finally found home as an adult. I think graduating college in December 2019 just to slide right into a pandemic sorta stunted that sense of establishing my own rhythms and moving my inner child to a new phase of life. But something about the windows looking out to the National Cathedral, the quirky pendant lights, and being in a home with two of my favorite Taurean women (Jess, roommate; Neptune, cat) feels like home in a new way.
Our first meal we hosted here was a late-summer crab feast. I hadn’t had a chance to sit down for crabs in almost two years, dawg. That’s too long. So we made makeshift table covers with Whole Foods/Trader Joe’s bags, Jess made this bombass pasta salad, and I picked up wine and crabs.
I had a loose sense that Tram-Cham-Bapple was right for the job but now that I re- flect on the whole situation, it made sense the entire time. This is a stew of two hybrid grapes, Traminette and Chambourcin, which are like these sexy, tasty twins coming to end vitis vinifera’s tyrannical reign in the East Coast, plus indigenous Ruby Red crab apples, all coming from Virginia. You absolutely can’t anticipate what happens in the glass. The texture from skins is hypnotic, the apple leaves this sense of sweetness, and Tram-Cham’s got this juicy fruit overripeness that feels so warm and friendly. The wine itself is partially made by my friend Ben, someone I wholly admire in the Virgin- ia wine scene today because he is (1) very smart, (2) extremely dedicated to the ex- perimental, and (3) is a certified ally in opening up natural wine production to BIPOC, queers, and all others who aren’t the typical Natty Wine Bros TM.
I glugged down that Tram-Cham-Bapple and picked crabs like my mom taught me, and like we’ve done every year since I was old enough to sit up. There was this synergy between the local fruit in the bottle and the piles of Chesapeake crab meat I was hoarding in my butter dish. And it totally makes sense: Redefining my sense of home in my big age of 25 isn’t this crazy endeavor full of unknowns. The best comfort comes from embracing who I am and what I’ve come to love living in the land I’ve always known. Chesapeake girl at heart <3
If My Therapist Still Took My Insurance I Would Have Set Up An Appointment Right Then To Process This With Her
Iapetus Wines’ Figure 03 Petnat
In January my then-boyfriend took a trip up to Vermont with his best friend to do some skiing and generally get into some winter cozy vibes. We had been together for threeish months at this point but he’s a Sagittarius and I was just about used to his constant adventuring already. At that point our relationship had a strong foundation of our shared love for exploring food and wine and beer, not just as an interest but as our lifeforce.
I had been obsessed with this label Iapetus since I tried one of their orange wines at Domestique at a North American wine tasting. It’s a project of very thoughtful wines using fruit from Shelburne Vineyard to connect us in the present with everything that’s happened in the Champlain Valley in the last million or so years. It’s very fucking ME coded.
My first forreal-forreal relationship was a personal unraveling. I was living in the dis- comfort I had practiced unpacking with my therapist all 2021, including but not limited to, feeling desirable, owning what I need and saying it out loud, and generally feeling dysmorphic about being someone’s monogamous partner and being vulnerable enough to give someone literally any fucking clue about how to show love to me instead of being an elusive goblin. At the end of 2021 my therapist chose to stop taking my insurance, and I just didn’t find it critical to pay out of pocket for our once-a-month kikis (though I miss you and still think about you, Lyssa).
The day he came back from Vermont I drove to his house and he unearthed all the good shit he brought back, including that only-in-Vermont drip like farmhouse ales, cheeses, cured meats, coffee, and just for me, the Iapetus red Petnat, literally spar- kling with glittering bubbles floating across the red lake in the bottle. This was the first red Petnat I had ever gotten to hold in my own hands. It had cranberries and blueberries, some citrus, and the most gorgeous coarse bubbles and it made me feel very vibrant.
And as I was marveling at the wine, the realization came crashing down that I was exposed. At some point the vulnerability had been on full display for this person, and I don’t know for how long. Like at what point did I let someone think it was okay to bring me a novelty bottle straight from this niche nerdy wine producer in Vermont that I love? Just as a nice thing to do for me? I crumbled inside and we crushed that bottle and we ate cheese and watched King of the Hill, probably.
Afters
Frontón de Oro Afrutado Blanco
Seeing how much fun my ex was having working in the restaurant industry full time was honestly reason number 1 or 2 that pushed me to quit my corporate job and get on the floor selling wine. February to March was a pretty terrifying time but I just felt that freaky little cosmic force pushing me deeper outside my comfort zone. I was es- sentially working two full time jobs as I transitioned out from the corporate role, pull- ing marketing reports during the mornings, studying my ass off trying to get the wine list down during lunch, then testing on everything I was learning at the restaurant in the evenings. I wanted to unalive myself!
One of the wines on the list at the restaurant that spring, the Afrutado from Frontón de Oro, was so fucking good. Like a Dole fruit cup but fresh and topped with the finest fresh coconut juice and a kiss of acid. It comes in this gem blue bottle straight from
La Lechuza in Gran Canaria, Spain, a part of the world I didn’t even know made wine commercially until this year. It was wild how so quickly my plan to work in a restau- rant full-time was already blowing everything I thought I understood about wine out of the water. I felt like I was barely treading that water trying to keep up with the curriculum, let alone completely upending my normal reality to really pursue this life.
I feel a lot of joy when I think about the Afrutado because it was one of the wines on
the table the first time I hung out with my coworkers after service, something I was near-desperate for as I was struggling to find where exactly I belong in this big wide world. We crowded on an Adams Morgan park picnic table late at night quite literally in the dark splitting Big Macs, nuggets, and fries and slurping Michelin-worthy wine out of delis. Afrutado and Sweet and Sour are literally meant for each other. The high and low merging together is really what makes life worth living.
I know that working at a restaurant isn’t sustainable for me long-term but I’m so fucking grateful I get paid to have fun and do bullshit like sell and write about wine.