Hard not to crave and seek, magpie-like, the shiny brightness and vigorous fruit burst of a brand-new wine. We open our bottles within hours of purchase and revel in instant gratification. I am as seduced as the next person by the cherry bonbon crunch of a Beaujolais and the blackcurrant compote note of a Petite Sirah not yet a year in bottle. I love the gentler flower-meadow Picpoul as much as the rasping green-grassiness of a Touraine Sauvignon Blanc. I savor the stony, lemon zest-lined quinine-bitterness of Assyrtiko just as I do the egg-custard nutmeg baking spice of a Chardonnay tasted straight from the barrel. These primary aromas and tastebud awakeners appeal to my human desire for all things fresh and pander to my preference for ignoring the passing of time.
This evening’s glass, raised in tribute to Simon Staples, a friend taken too soon, needs to be something of a different ilk, however. Something more profound, something with age, as an emphatic reminder that time does indeed pass, all too quickly.
We met in London in the 1990s. We were young, just stepping into our wine shoes. He called me ‘Tools’, and plenty of other unmentionable nicknames over the years, in his eternally lovely-lewd, irreverent way. I was playing at the broker role while he was mastering it thoroughly, mercilessly, always merrily. Over the subsequent years, as I struggled with the MW, he simply opened the bottles, and thoroughly KNEW wine.
More than three decades have passed since those heady days of London trading. Right now, it feels like a blink of the eye. When did you last open a wine bottle that was more than 30 years old? Was there a faint uneasiness, a minor anxiety, that the wine would no longer be ‘right’, past its prime, shot, figuratively bled dry? A similar sense of nervous anticipation has sometimes bothered me when approaching a personal reunion yet melted the moment I leant in to embrace and reconnect. People change as do wines, in the ageing process. Yet while their architecture and circumstances evolve, their core remains, as does what you always loved about them.
I loved that for years he teased me like a brother. I loved that we posh-dined in cities and nosh-dinnered with my family at my home in Bordeaux. I loved how much he understood and took his trade seriously and yet never, ever, failed to make me, and countless others, laugh. He never flattered me nor the wines he bought and sold, yet always made me feel better just as he elevated the labels he promoted. I loved how much he loved his wife, Sarah. My heart goes to her today.
Recently, I tasted two wines from Stag’s Leap Cellars approaching their 50th birthday. As a child of the ‘70s, tasting wines ‘my age’ is a revelation. I note the tawny rim and degradation of aromas from flower-in-bloom to pot-pourri dust. But rather than write words that describe a…
