Roots

On a cold, snowy night on the cusp of February, I find myself thinking about the roots of wine. Blame the Greek wine I've been drinking this week, but considering the ancient Greek rituals of wine service: in which wine would be poured from an amphora into a Krater and ladled by the Kythos into the drinking vessel, the two-handled Kylix, where it would be mixed with water to fend off intoxication (and no doubt cut the aromas of the Aleppo pine resin), and enjoying two throughly modern Greek reds, the Boutari Nauossa Xinomavro 2004, and the Skouras Nemea Aghioritiko 2005, I found myself thinking about the centuries of Greek dormancy as an international wine, when it was Greece itself that taught the Romans to make wine, who then spread winemaking up through Northern Europe, leading us to the present moment, where an American wine drinker will enjoy as delightful and contemporary a wine as the Didier Dageneu "Silex," without any desire to try any Greek wines, the cousins of any contemporary European wine, and the most direct descendants of ancient Greek viticulture, the ultimate lineage of such a modern wine. Krassato, a component of Rapsani from Thessaly, is in fact the grape that gave us the descriptor "Krassato" which is most famously employed in the Odyssey, in Homer's reference to a "wine-dark" sea. (MacNeil, The Wine Bible, pp. 611)

Thinking about the ways in which Greek viticulture has finally caught up with the international market, and the more recent criticism of the "International" style of winemaking, which practically suggests that Michel Rolland passing by a vineyard will leach every note of authenticity out of it, I found myself considering what constututes vinuous authenticity, and just who's doing the measuring? In Pedro Almodovar's "Todo Sobre Mi Madre," the transsexual prostitute Agrado gives a rousing oration on authenticity, which immediately came to mind. She discusses the literal cost of her authenticity, and defines authenticity as coming closest to one's vision of one's self no matter how far from the starting point it takes you. Pine resin was a reliable ancient preservative, but it would only serve to distort the subtleties of either of these wines.

The Boutari Nauossa 2004 was a delight. With a saline, mineral nose, a palate of asparagus, laurel and fennil seed, and an unnervingly long, evocative yet evanescent finish, it made for easy drinking, and immediate consideration of what a vegetal, nuanced light-bodied red like this would fetch if it were produced in Burgundy, and not from xinomavro.

The Skouras St. George (Agiorgitikos) 2005 invited similar speculation. Its nose is full of wild strawberries, plums and roast lamb, with a palate of cloves and red cabbage, and an artichoke roundness, which extends into a fast-fading finish of bright acidity and berry patch richness.

Both these wines invite quaffing, and would drown in water, Socrates be damned, but both these wines also point to the power of modern wine-making technique to bring ancient varietals into clean and nuanced focus, without the palate dulling influence of pine resin.

Thinking about the roots of viticulture, I also found myself thinking about the sentimental education one must undergo to really engage with wine. I was lucky that my father introduced me to the pleasures of the vine early, inviting me to try such beautiful wines as the 1972 Mouton-Rothschild and NV Krug, which I never really fully appreciated until I found myself working in Chicago in the early years of this decade, lucky enough to receive a comprehensive wine education from two Master Sommeliers still working in the city at the time, Serafim Alvarado and Jason Smith. My generation of servers at Charlie Trotter's now helm the wine programs at a number of the city's best restaurants, and I am proud to count myself in their number, however humbly.

Thinking of the Boutari family, with a winemaking tradition that stretches back six generations into the nineteenth century, in a region that's been making wine since the birth of philosophy, I am suitably humbled. These Greek varieties have been cultivated since the birth of Western Civilization and they still have something to say. "Muy autentica," in other words.