Expensive wine 20: Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe 2001

Why wine is about more than points, snobs and geeks:

I don't get to see my family more than a couple of times a year; call it one of the vagaries of post-modern life. So when I did get to Chicago earlier this month, my brother sent me an email: Check my cellar, and pick the wine to have with dinner -- pot roast with gravy and roasted potatoes and onions. Jim is a wine aficionado of some repute, and among his favorites are the French Cote du Rhones. He considers the best Rhone wines to be tremendous values given the silly prices that high end Bordeaux and Burgundy go for, and he is exactly right.

I picked two: an early '90s Guigal that was starting to show its age, but was still fine, and the Telegraphe ($50, purchased). The Telegraphe is an example of classic Rhone winemaking from the region of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and the wine has been a standard for decades. This vintage was no exception. It had everything it was supposed to have -- the lead pencil aroma, red fruit, lots of spice and some herbs, and all integrated in a marvelously complex way. The wine was still a bit young, but certainly ready to drink.

But that's not why I'm going to remember the wine, as good as it tasted. I'm going to remember it because Jim brought it and our family shared it. And when someone asks me about what I like about Rhone wines or the Telegraphe, I'll tell them about drinking it with my family. Which is a whole lot more important than the score it got.

Comments

[Tom Johnson]

One of the magical thing about wine is the way a special bottle can turn a regular evening into an event.

We had a friend over for something off the grill on a Thursday night last summer -- just one of those casual, spur-of-the-moment things. He showed up with a bottle of '91 Cain Five.

What might have been a kind of mid-week casual dinner and back home in time for the early news turned into a lovely, long evening of deep conversation. The wine did that; we were just the beneficiaries.