Yesterday, when Lewis Dickson poured me a glass of his recently bottled 2010 Du Petit Lait, a saignée of estate-grown Merlot and Black Spanish, I couldn’t help but be reminded what my friend downtown Michael told me the other day, as we sat in his office overlooking the San Diego Harbor and chatted about the vicissitudes of Natural wine.
“When you taste Natural wine,” he said, “it’s like you taste the fruit in technicolor.”
There was a pause. We looked at each and I think we both knew the thought that was going through the other’s mind.
“It’s like you’re high on LSD,” he said, beating me to the punch.
Here’s my tasting note for Lewis’s juicy, technicolor, and super delicious rosé:
Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
Cellophane flowers of yellow and green,
Towering over your head.
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,
And she’s gone.
Lewis, who grows and makes Natural wine about an hour and a half’s drive south of where Tracie P and I live in Central Texas, had come to town to partake in Pink Fest 2011 (a rosé wine tasting at our fav local wine bar and my client Vino Vino) and he brought a bottle for us to taste with him. Lewis, the inimitable Bill Head , and I also really loved the Zoë rosé by Skouras (Greece), made from mostly Agiorgitiko with a smaller amount of Moschofilero.
Tasting Lewis’s rosé reminded me of those countless times that we’ve offered a glass of a Natural wine to someone who’s never tasted one before. It’s always followed by a wow, I’ve never tasted anything like that before, that’s DELICIOUS…
As I headed back to my desk and the piles of work that awaited me on an otherwise gorgeous Saturday afternoon in Austin, I couldn’t help but ponder the notion that Natural wine may not be for everyone… Maybe it’s only for those of us who are ready to open their minds and walk through the the doors of perception…
Buona domenica, yall!…
