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| Birichino “Pétulant Naturel” Sparkling Carignane rosé Lodi 2022 Andrea Occhipinti “Alea Rosa” Vino Rosato Lazio 2023 Julien Pineau “Les Sucettes à l’Aunis” Vin de France 2022 Maestracci “Les Marottes d’Anaïs” Corse Calvi 2022 Ashanta “Mawu” Sonoma 2022 Wittgenstein once observed, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” But must we, and why, other than the risk of making a blubbering fool of oneself? In the wine trade, we pride ourselves in our ability to puzzle through the qualia of our experience using a tasting framework, using words, which are an imperfect tool to be sure, but they are all that we have. The “Somm” movies portray this struggle dramatically, showing well-trained professionals in suits wielding a constrained lexicon to vector in and deconstruct wines. For folks who love wine but are not in the wine trade, words are important, too, but only if you feel the need to move beyond the simple, emotivist grunt of “delicious!” Of course, there is a great deal always left unsaid about certain wines, whereas the simplest, mass-produced, uniform industrial commodity wines leave us with little to say other than reminiscing about the time we had too much Riunite Lambrusco and projectile vomited all over the back seat of mom’s Chevy Vega. Some of the wines you do want to put in your mouth may be simple and have not much news to report, but you leave every encounter feeling better for have enjoyed their unassuming pleasures; some wines that you want to put in your mouth may be complex and profound, and minutes, days, even half a lifetime later you find yourself still with the experience, much like the people who have mattered the most to you. In the wine trade, we prize the quick-witted assessment of a wine, and yet what we leave unsaid is the lived experience of wine, of where we go off to when we taste certain wines, the long duration of the wines that haunt and inhabit us. Tonight, we are tasting Andrea Occhipinti’s “Alea Rosa,” a wine that is not terribly expensive and not something to cosset away and drink later once it has become tertiary, but a wine for today. Occhipinti is doing tremendous work with the ancient Lazio variety aleatico and makes a number of cuvees from it, including the wine we are trying this evening. The grape was known in antiquity and farmers on the volcanic terroir near Rome continue to grow it today. The wine, either a dark rosato or a light red, is fresh, floral, dry, slightly turbid, and ethereal. I do not know if it is profound wine, yet it is a wine that nevertheless haunts and inhabits your mind. |