(Take Another Little) Piece Of My Heart

[NERD ALERT! Forgive me my good friends, but sometimes, the poet in me escapes and will not be denied a soapbox upon which to deliver another corny soliloquy about wine, beauty and love. You’ve been warned.]

Do you ever have a moment when you find yourself wandering aimlessly in a place that feels like a dream?  A dream where what you are seeing is of extraordinary beauty and grace it cannot possibly be real?  I found myself there recently and I felt a little more than compelled to share it with you.

I have found myself on the beach as the day is breaking, and the light of the sun is merely a whisper of the beautiful day that lie ahead.  I’ve stood on a mountain top staring down into the valley, so lush and green it looks as if you were standing above a perfect painting.  I’ve seen the night sky lit up by a meteor shower that looked like fiery diamonds racing toward points unknown in the heavens.  Yet I found myself earlier in the week blessed not once, but twice by awe-inspiring wonder and grace, dazzling spectacles artists may spend significant amounts of their lives (if not in their entireties) celebrating.  And while one of those I will save for a more appropriate venue, the other was an incredible wine to which I was introduced by my Bordeaux guru, Dan Greathouse.

I love hearing about the great Bordeaux producers through the lens and voice of Dan.  He knows the ins-and-outs and all the eccentricities of Bordeaux, and he delivers said knowledge with the tenor of a Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones.  So it was rather incredible, in the din of all that is a wholesaler holiday show, that Dan quickly, yet emphatically, delivered a small monologue of the history of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild’s Aile d’Argent.

A little background, Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, a first-growth producer from the Bordeaux commune of Pauillac, is considered one of the top estates in Bordeaux, and is one of the most historically significant estates in all the world.  Originally designated a second-growth chateau per the Classification of 1855, it is significant in that it was the only change to the original decree, elevated to first growth status in 1973.  

As for the Aile d’Argent, the wine was born out of a fairy tale told to Baroness Philippine de Rothschild by her father when she was young.  As Dan told me, the Baron Philippe de Rothschild was taken prisoner by the Nazis during World War II.  His wife was executed yet he escaped, joining Charles de Gaulle’s forces to fight the Germans until the end of the war.  His daughter, the Baroness Philippine, was only a child during the war and was obviously shaken by the events of the war, so Baron Philippe created a story to help her through it, help her sleep at nights.  While in the camps, he wrote the story down from memory and it was inevitably published in 1947.  The name of the story was Aile d’Argent (which translates to “Silver Wing”) and it’s hero was a magical flying teapot.  

Mouton had never made a white wine until the Baroness took over operations from her father, and in 2005, released their first vintage of the wine she calls Aile d’Argent, a really remarkable white wine that is a fairly limited release.

Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Aile d’Argent Bordeaux Blanc 2014.  This is a white wine unlike anything you may have had before.  65% Sauvignon Blanc and 35% Semillon, you get in your glass something truly special.  There is briny lemon mixed in with bright minerality, lanolin, Yellow Delicious apples, fresh pineapple, peach and nectarine notes with a touch of white spices.  There are dimensions that emerge that seduce you, entice you, move you to savor it’s long, mysterious complexities and intricacies that leave you beguiled, bewitched, unmoored from the real world.  It’s something to behold, that is for sure.

There are moments in this job, as with life, that arise without warning, something that you stumble upon inadvertently, that simply takes your breath away.  It may be the most fleeting of moments, like a shooting star, or it may be something that remains ever present in your life.  You may continue to marvel upon those moments.  They may even break your heart.  Yet it is in those moments, those glorious, unexpected moments that help define you and your point-of-view for the rest of your days.  The wine, and also the other thing to which I will sheepishly allude, were such beautiful moments.  And my friends, I will be thinking of them both for some time to come.