by Covert » Tue Dec 09, 2008 6:19 am
Café Adirondack might be likened to a home for wayward girls, where they could be straightened out to one’s liking rather then cured in the classical sense. Once before I found a bottle heretofore hopelessly harsh flourishing there, a St-Esteph from a hard year, just like the 1998 Lafon-Rochet.
And likewise I admit I might have created my relationship rather than discerned it. A discerning would cast question on Jenise’s wine’s provenance, whilst a creating is just what it is.
The first sniff of the liquid’s deep, dark fruit revealed that something was hidden, rather than what was hidden. You didn’t have it; you just knew subconsciously that it was there to be found in time. Time was short before the lady behind the curtain revealed her self, if difficult to describe. Far off memories emerged like forest springs just out of range. There was an herb I should know well, maybe bay leaf, – and earth, leather, cedar, evergreen – but, not in their pure forms. This was what made this wine exciting to me: everything was off from what it seemed, more like an expressionistic representation of referential reality. If I had to pick a word, it would be elegance, classical Bordeaux elegance.
Guessing an element of this class definition, I will say resonance, back and forth from cab to Merlot. Just when you thought it was one, it was the other, a trixter dancing a synergistic waltz. If there was a flaw, someone like Parker might retail its attenuated length. To me it created a delightful dark corridor walk into a little garden of spice, like a single note sometimes used to cast a turning-on-end question mark finish on a powerful, full concerto.
I think I know what critics refer to as weight, specifically picking up weight. It is like you could swear your glass got heavier, and you guess it is because the molecules are somehow becoming more packed. An ethereal concentration without accompanying thickness, suggesting an unearthly purity in balance with its whatever earthly taste.
A man of distinction arose from an adjacent table, with his wife. He carried the tools of wine portage, and glanced at mine, forming instantaneous camaraderie. Catching my eye, he said I must order the pecan pie, and they exited into the night. I said I would to his back, even though it would be the first time in a very long time. My wife, Lynn, doesn’t permit it, for health reasons, and to maintain our only claim to fame, perfectly flat stomachs at 65.
At dinner’s end, Jessica, our uncommonly comely waitress suggested the same. I said she obviously didn’t eat such stuff herself, judging from her beautiful figure. She looked at me confusedly and after silence held up both her hands for my second inspection, remarking that she had always considered her digits rather common. ‘Oh – not your finger, I said “figure.”’
“Oh yes, that’s pretty good,” the girl said with an appreciative smile, “I walk thirteen miles a day.” And she began to elaborate the specific trails she likes to walk, including their ponds and peak vistas. I love the Adirondacks. We drove the entire ten miles back to camp without seeing a single second car. And it was the best pie, maybe even the best desert, I ever tasted.
