CAMPOut: Fay's Rehoboth Journal

I’ve been thinking about wine a lot lately. Well, not first thing in the morning with Boone’s Farm apple in a paper bag. Although I actually did think about it first thing in the morning, when I helped promote the April wine and food festival in town. While I was consumed by wine the minute I walked into the office each day, luckily I wasn’t also consuming.

One thing I learned by being involved in the wine fest is that all bets are off. Everything I thought I knew about wine is up for grabs.

No vinophile, my first taste was sipping Manaschevitz at the Jewish holidays. I’d rather drink Robitussin. Actually, I suspect that the infamous Kosher Concord grape is from the illustrious Nyquil region of France.

Although even Kosher wine is improving. In fact, there’s a web site called Kosher Wine Connoisseur, which, only a few years ago would have been a major oxymoron. Apparently, some of the stuff is really good now. But that news does little for the fact that my introduction to wine gave me a sugar high and cured bronchitis.

By high school, we’d sneak across state lines to small towns where you could drink legally at 18 and get away with it at 16. At that point we thought we were real cool to get the boy with the most upper lip fuzz (as opposed to the women with the most upper lip fuzz now that we’re in the AARP) to buy us bottles of Lancers in those darling red crockery bottles. I don’t remember what it tasted like, but we thought we were really cool for drinking it.

In college I moved on to Mateus, a vaguely foreign-sounding imbibement which, concurrently made us feel sophisticated and nauseous. It’s a wonder we ever sipped wine again.

Welcome to the 1970s. It was all Chianti in cute straw-covered bottles, with or without spaghetti. And a little Blue Nun. Public relations programs all over the country are still citing those Anne Meara/Jerry Stiller radio ads as an example of the greatest brand identification ad campaign of all time. All of America was drinking that sweetly anemic German Leibfraumilch wine. Ptooey.

I think it was replaced in the 80s by Reunite on Ice, remember that one? After that, Chardonnay became the rage and it’s still hanging on.

Around about 1985 though, George DeBeouf importers played the brand ID game again and gave us Beaujolais Nouveau. They got everybody excited about a grape that had gone from the vine to the liquor store in about fifteen minutes. Okay, it was longer than that. But it was very, very new wine.

On the third Thursday in November, regardless of when the wine from the Beaujolais region of France was actually harvested, DeBeof released that year’s Nouveau. Sometimes it was really good, and sometimes it was swill. But it always came with big fanfare, pretty labels and parties starting at one minute past midnight on release day. In New York one year, an entire motorcycle gang of wealthy wine drinkers from the Hamptons drove their Harleys to the docks and welcomed the freighters with the first batch. Now that was a PR man’s dream.

In our house we always gamble on the Nouveau for Thanksgiving, but our favorite wine is actually Chateauneuf du Pape. I was introduced to it in the late 70s through friends with an educated palette (and wallet). I loved the hearty Burgundy wine, loved its romantic sounding name, and loved remembering all the celebrations it invoked.

All that love was reinforced on a 1998 France trip when we literally stumbled upon the region and the ruins of the actual Chateau of the Ninth Pope. After drinking and dining al fresco with the sun, the vineyards, the divine food, live chickens strolling around, and the imposing, crumbling chateau neuf itself in the background, I was in love to stay. It happens to be a great wine, but with the romance of that afternoon, it could have been Welches grape juice and it would still be my favorite.

So by this time, while I’m no connoisseur, I figure if wine costs a lot, has a real cork, and comes in a bottle instead of a cardboard box, it’s the good stuff.

But no! Now I learn that real cork, in addition to being expensive, can develop a smelly, nasty fungus called cork taint to contaminate even the most lovingly cellared wine. All of Europe seems to be talking about, "When good corks go bad!"

That being the case, synthetic corks are popping up. I think they take the Incredible Hulk to unplug them. I tried to smell one once and had a dozen dinner guests laughing at me.

"Good thing I didn’t try to smell a screw cap!" I joked. But now it’s no joke.

The formerly déclassé screwcap is entering the upscale wine market. Who knew. The new screwcaps are in. Come on baby, let’s do the twist. I’m sure some of it is expert marketing (shades of Blue Nun) but the truth is, I just tasted some really good wine in a screw cap bottle. Although the first few times it’s hard to be serious telling someone to unscrew the wine so it can breathe.

What’s next, a good vintage in a box with a spigot? Ha-Ha-Ha. The answer appears to be yes. Some West Coast wineries are actually experimenting with good wines in the old bag-in-the-box. They call them cask wines, but it’s really just a sack of wine. I hear they’re pretty good. Are we being manipulated? Maybe a little. But wineries are finding ways to make good wines more accessible at smaller prices.

And I find that admirable. In fact, I was really impressed by the various wine reps and winery owners who visited Rehoboth for the wine tasting weekend at the end of April. Bonnie and I sampled some wonderful selections, and enjoyed as many events as we could.

Apart from the wine itself, my favorite moment of the weekend happened at the Bedazzled B&B’s Friday afternoon wine tasting. More than a dozen folks stood around the living room, some talking amongst themselves, some listening to a description of the wines by the visiting vintner and some taking a look at the dazzling movie memorabilia in the room.

Suddenly, the flat-screen HDTV, that had been playing old TV shows flashed with the most stunning scene. There it was, in black and white, Judy Garland and Barbara Streisand doing a duet. If, for some reason, it had been important to know who was straight and who was gay in that room, you would have had no trouble with the head count. All the gay people immediately stopped talking and stared at the two icons on the screen. Gawwwd, we can be so predicable at times!

But it was a magic moment of wine, women and song. I’ll drink to that.