This little guy doesn’t have a guilty bone in his body. Neither should you. Here is this week’s $15 or less offering.
No-Guilt Wednesday is not about compromising on quality. It’s all about drinking good wine that does not break the bank, eating good food and of course, it’s about sharing with the ones you love.
With the onset of November and the changing of the clocks with the expanding darkness that foretells the colder, darker and shorter days ahead, my mind shifts in many directions at once. There is this seven week period which bridges us to the Winter Solstice which is a turning point when the days promise more daylight and more coldness. I am reminded of just how rapidly the year has whipped past me and the fact that the aging guy in the mirror is not the same guy I feel like every day when I awake. (Truthfully, though, there are also days when the guy whose head hits the pillow feels exactly like the guy in the mirror.) And as the expanding hours of darkness have consumed my days, I find myself pondering how best to lighten each day.
The pleasures of the table also have a dark side. Our instinctual inclination is to consume more and store fat for the dark frigid days ahead. It is no wonder that folks come out of the “holiday” season girded for the coldest days of the year and looking for relief from their celebratory cuisines at their local gymnasiums as they attempt to reverse the personal Holiday larding of their bodies in the early days of the New Year.
A Sybarite should not care about these things, right? But I am also a person who craves balance. Between light and dark, red and white, fat and fit. I also crave pleasure, and those pleasures– a group of friends, a nice meal, a great little wine– bring lightness in these dark days.
Tonight’s wine, a Vaucluse, from the Rhone is one I found over the weekend at a local shop: A Grenache and Syrah based wine elegant in its simplicity.
Michel Glassier Cercius Cotes Du Rhone Villages 2009 ($14). Full of earth and dark spicy fruit with a pinch of dusky sour cherry, this wine kept my tongue clicking with its savory edges. The name Cercius, a Latin word, refers to the North-Northwest winds that sweep over the vines in the village of Visan on the northern end of Vaucluse. With moderate tongue-coating tannins, and aged for 6 months in concrete prior to bottling, this blend of 85% Grenache and 15% Syrah softly whispers, “The cold days ahead are made for us.” Rated **1/2
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