The Wine Cellar Soliloquies, Part Two

​Wine is transportive.  Yeah, that’s the spirit.  Sometimes it’s a time machine, or at least I get that feeling every so often.  Growing up, I had a lot of relations with fruit trees, bushes, gardens, and one other thing that always stood out for me was the grocery store.  Once I had a bit of independence as a kid – I was 9 or 10 at the time – I would ride my bike around the neighborhood, and eventually would work up the courage to ride the eight blocks to the local grocery.  I’d collect pop bottles that had been tossed out of cars along the roadside, and I’d take them in to get money for candy some of the time, but fruit most of the time.  

Summertime and Fall especially, I’d get enough money for an apple or a peach, and ride around my sleepy little suburbia, daydream I was a fighter pilot as the jets from Wright-Patt would whiz by overhead, and find a spot at the park to lay in the grass, stare at the sky… yet what would catch my attention in those dog days of summer, were the smells of the produce in that little store on the corner of Dayton-Xenia and Longview, the smells of all those fruit trees and bushes around my house on Woods Drive, the flowers, the grass, the trees… it was more than a bit prophetic that I would grow up to sell wine for a living.  It was down at the park that my mind would wander, to various places and times, like imaginary adventures, all facilitated by my overactive sense of smell.

So we’re in the cellar once again with our good friend Stacey and she has a trio of wines from Gaja, one of Italy’s biggest wine rockstars.  Nebbiolo and Sangiovese, two incredible grape varieties that, in the hands of Gaja’s winemaking team, become equally transportive.  

Gaja Langhe Sito Moresco 2015.  Youthful, exuberant and positively brilliant.  A blend of Nebbiolo, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, this is medium-to-full-bodied, with notes of plum, currant, tobacco and spice.

Gaja Barolo Dagromis 2012.  A beautiful Nebbiolo, still quite shy, but alluding toward supple black fruit, dried herbs, crushed violets and peppery spices.  Give it a bit.
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Pieve Santa Restituta Brunello di Montalcino 2012.  Holy moly this is good.  Loads of dark red fruits, black pepper, rosemary and leather explode from the glass.  It’s generous in its nuances, with a voluptuous body and firm tannins from soup-to-nuts.

Each and every time I taste wine, I find myself often, back in my old neighborhood, whether I am sitting beneath my family grape tree, or walking through the neighbor’s blackberry bush, the flowers and plants at Knollwood Nursery, or walking into the old Lofino’s with a box of empty Pepsi bottles in my hands.  Simpler days I remember vividly in the glass in front of me.  It’s a luxury I cherish.

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