There is something so Japanese about Caviste in Winston-Salem. Here is this one man in this little store doing this one thing so enormously well. As I wandered around his store grinning, recognizing so many beloved wines, I saw this strange bird hanging from the wall, her 1995 proudly displayed as well as gram or more of sediment. He told me the story, the distributor, laughed with me at the strangeness of the fact of this wine, and told me to wait until fall to drink it. Naturally I drank it that day.
Golden as in light shining in a golden box, thick, yellow, saturated, dirty gold. Not gleaming or pristine, but glowing from within, thickly, slowly. You could not read by this light but you could find your beloved in a crowd of bodies, by their shape, by their motion. The nose is, on the one hand, butter, but so is butter, and if butter smelled like this then it would be as precious as truffles. Which reminds me that there are also truffles here, rubbery and bright, acrid, like new tires, very little stately porcini. Outrageous acid, heartburn-inducing, like a 750 of daiquiris. The palate is unctuous, oily, full, there are hazelnuts and almonds and fat. Concentration, fat, gold, rubber, graham crackers sodden in a torrent of hot butter, the mind reels. If this is wine, and River Road is wine, then what does the word wine mean anyway? Overwhelms sausage and cauliflower alike, is a ballista where cheese is a thatched hut. This wine needs cinnabon!
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