Chateau Pegau Maclura 2014

Growing up I was a bit of a weird kid, more interested in old movies, books and opera than video games, girl/boy bands or trying in any way to relate to my peers. When other girls my age were flocking to see Spice World, I was renting The Seventh Seal for the zillionth time (still an amazing film!). They went to see N*Sync in concert while I willingly accompanied my parents to see Madame Butterfly. It’s not that I was more cultured or better educated than them, I just had people in my life who influenced me to have different interests.

My paternal grandparents played the biggest part of all in that.* They lived close to us (eventually right across the street) and I probably saw them almost as often as I saw my parents. I loved spending time at their home and not because they had cable TV (a luxury my parents did not allow us, thanks to my oldest sister’s penchant for watching “inappropriate” channels, aka MTV for some reason). What I loved most about their house was their extensive collection of books. Some of them were a bit out of my league at the time and others might have been a bit inappropriate, but I just loved the way their backroom looked filled with worn hardcovers. That might be why I’ve always kept a ridiculous number of books that I refuse to get rid of, no matter how much of a pain they are to take on trips or move from apartment to apartment (sure, Kindles and the like, are nifty, but it’s just not the same as having an actual, physical book).

My favorite book out of that backroom was Edward FtizGerald’s English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, a collection of poems attributed to Omar Khayyám, a Persian poet, astronomer and mathematician from the Middle Ages. Before I could even read, this was the book I’d grab off the shelf because I loved the vivid, colorful illustrations in it. Once I became literate I also appreciated the words as well:

                                                                                      

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

I’ve never forgotten that particular poem, it was my favorite then and it’s still up there now. These days it also makes me want Rhone wine (a region that produces what I would consider the epitome of wild and untamed wines). In order to satisfy that craving recently, I took home Chateau Pegau’s Cotes du Rhone Maclura 2014. It’s a blend of 65% Grenache, 25^% Syrah and 10% Mouvedere with no oak aging and it was spectacular. Full-bodied and dry with notes of raspberry, cassis, black pepper and dried violets. There was a bit more emphasis on the fruit than I’d expected, but the full tannins and earthiness on the finish gave it more of that Old World feel.

Rhone will always be one of my favorite wine regions and it will always make me wish my grandparents were still alive to share a glass with me. They were good people and I owe them for shaping me into the person I am today, weirdness and all.

*Not that my parents were slacking in that regard, e.g. when I was in elementary school I had a terrible stomach virus and my dad used it as an excuse to make me watch a filmed performance of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in its entirety… something I totally didn’t appreciate as much as I should have at the time (for obvious reasons).