As predicted, those old sinuses cleared up just in time for Friday night, and after a day of light chores and a long lunch, we decided to stay home and keep it simple. See, board games and wine has got to be one of my favorite evening activities ever. Last night, the custom came to Los Angeles with homemade pizza, our good friends Tim and Megan, and a friendly game of Cranium.
I topped the pizza, and Tim had already decanted the zin by the time it came out of the oven. Those who know me already know how I feel about pizza and zinfandel—suffice it to say that I would be pleased if that was the only thing served at my wedding some day—and as the zin was tasty but nothing to write home about, I am going to breeze over this part of the evening and invite you to join us after the plates are cleared, the game is out, and the real star of the evening has arrived: the 2006 Nobility, the special treat from R.A. Harrison Family Cellars I mentioned last week, next to a pile of Point Reyes blue cheese.
R.A. Harrison Family Cellars is a small winery in Napa owned and operated by Roger Harrison, a.k.a. Mr Botrytis. The man has been on the team responsible for making the award winning Nightingale Sauternes-style dessert wine at Beringer Vineyards since 1983, and when it comes to noble rot, he know what he’s doing. In 2008, after 25 five years of working with botrytis cinera at Beringer, Roger branched out and opened his own winery to further his dream of making these top-quality, extremely rare dessert wines in the style of the infamous Chateau Y’Quem in Sauterne, France. The Nobility, presumably named after the noble rot that gives it its signature concentrated honeyed sweetness, is the winery’s premier wine. And it’s damn good.
Some things in life just go together. Wine and cheese, of course, is one such thing. I know I don’t need to preach this to an audience such as yourselves, but allow me to say one thing: if you’ve never had Sauternes or a Sauternes-style dessert wine with a funky blue cheese, you simple haven’t lived.
Made with 50% Sauvignon Blanc from Napa Valley and 50% Semillon from Sonoma County, the Nobility tastes just like the golden sun that graces both of the beautiful valleys. It is fresh honey electrified with dried apricots and lemon zest. The Point Reyes Blue fills your mouth with bitter, salty cream. The sweetness of the wine cuts the funk, and acidity wipes your palate clean. The experience is like being a child again, running barefoot through tall grass under a hot sun, chasing clouds right to the edge of the waterhole and launching in feet first, the stick of summer immediately disappearing even as you crawl out of the water, anxious to be hot again simply so that you can cool off one more time. A bite of blue cheese, a sip of Nobility. Your tongue begs you for more. You concede. Well, we did anyway. Time and time again. And at 14.4% alcohol and one bottle of red already down, our repeated concessions started to show in our rosy cheeks and our increasingly creative Cranium strategies. When we pulled the Copycat challenge and Megan started singing “I Will Always Love You” as an impersonation of Celine Dion—and I got it right—I knew we had another successful night of perfect pairings.
Cheers.
