-excerpt from Among School Children, WB Yeats
I have trouble sitting still. At dinner with friends I need to stand up and sometimes try to escape to the kitchen to do the dishes because my hands feel too idle at rest. Part of this means it is very difficult for me to sit and read a book, especially for pleasure. I read non-fiction before bed, with a pen in my hand. I don’t love this about myself.
Years ago when I told my friend that I didn’t read many novels, he said, ‘but don’t you find reading fiction like the most relaxing thing?’ The answer was yes, but relaxation is hard for me to access. Even in drinking wine, something believed by our culture to be so relaxing there are throw pillows embroidered about it, has to be timed right for my mind and body in order to be calming. some days it’s not going to be relaxing at all.
Given my interest in wine, around that same time, I tried sipping some wine while reading. Adding wine made my attempt to sit still reading even harder. Alcohol was consciousness-altering in the wrong direction. Wine makes me want to chat, to dance, to cook, not usually to sit and read. It is a downer but often makes me even more restless.
I would like to read more fiction all year round, but for now I read mostly in the summer on vacation, like lots of people.
This week Dave and I are in Michigan staying at a friend’s cottage. I was reading while he was out on an evening jog and decided to have a glass of wine. Something clicked into place. When Dave returned I said, ‘I don’t know what’s juicier, the book or the wine.’
I find myself analyzing — what was it about this scenario that made it so the wine seemed to make the book better, and the book seemed to make the wine better? How did I stumble on the allusive literature + wine pairing?
After considering all the possible factors surrounded this blissful harmony of wine and book, I found the answers kind of obvious though not easily replicated.
I’ve been drinking wines from Rainbow, wines that I feel very close to, more understanding of than perhaps any other wines that I ever worked with or drank. The bottles live in my house, in my basement. I write about each of them for the tasting notes on our site. I consider each of them deeply with my best friend and the other half of Rainbow, Em. I have been to visit most of the wineries where these are made, met the people who make them. I wonder if in the past, drinking wine with books was often wine I hadn't had before, or also, wine I didn’t care about at all. There was some uneven investment between book and wine. Maybe if I was having a novel wine while reading I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the story, as I’d be too distracted forming a narrative about the bottle.
And maybe I just found the right wine for the book. Maybe they hit the right tone. I’m curious if this is the case, and therefore, I am sharing with you this pairing.
The wine is Casot de Mailloles Rose de Zaza. The book is Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance, a gay literature classic I avoided for a while because I deemed it less relevant than other books in this category that reflect an experience not white and male. And also because I lost a friend many years ago whose voice I could hear in these pages. Dancer takes place in Manhattan and Fire Island, in the wild party scene of late 70s gay men and queens. The first glass I had with around 60 pages, the late first act of the story.
The second glass I had after dinner, my heart bleeding for a lonely, loveless character, before he finally embraces how much he loves men, and frankly, loves dick.
Something people seem to agree about this novel is it being funny and sad. My first glass was more funny, my second more sad.
This wine is sort of funny and sad. Not funny but sunny. Not sad but deep.
Le Casot De Mailloles is a much-beloved, pioneering winery using natural methods since Alain Castex and Ghislaine Magnier made their first vintage in an old Citroen garage in the 1990s. The vineyard plots line the Mediterranean Sea in the coastal region of Banyuls, in the Roussillon in France. They are very steep, with walled terraces, and very difficult to access and to tend to, with fierce winds blowing off the Pyrenees mountains. The fruit for Rose de Zaza comes from a vineyard called Tarerach, nearer to the mountains than the sea.
Alain is as a very influential natural winemaker. In 2015, there was an official changing of the guard, where Jordi Perez, a young Catalonian, made his first solo vintage for Le Casot. Alain and Jordi worked together proceeding this, Jordi deemed an excellent steward of the winery to continue it on.
Things have been changing a little with the winery, as you’d expect with a fresh perspective. Jordi wanted to alter the label design, which many people adore, and got push back. When I tasted with him at La Dive Bouteille in 2019, I commented on how bold, fruity, confident and delicious the wines were. It’s a big generalization based also on my experience with cooler vintages, and therefore usually lighter-bodied wines, but especially with certain grapes like grenache, the wines had been more sheer, more delicate in my recollection. “The new Casot de Mailloles,” Jordi responded.
It feels like the direction of the winery is more sun-soaked, ripe and full, if not because this is Jordi’s desire, at least due in part to the mandate of our warming earth. There are also a few new wines Jordi is making from sites further inland, like Zaza, and so my overall impression is shifting around those.
So here we have a plummy, berry fruity, delicious wine, with some drama about labels, and a compelling notion of this changing of the guard.
I have thought a lot about the characterization of these men, created narratives, imagined what the driving force of the new casot de mailloles is. I’m thinking about how conjecture plays into the enjoyment of these and other wines.
One of the themes of Dancer from the Dance is gossip (The brilliant character Sutherland says at one point, “Even Thoreau went to town to gossip.”) The narrator sits inside the world of the story, although just on the cusp of the lives of the main characters. He considers these men, their style, their interior life. He is one of them. A critique of this book is that the narrative is a little superficial. I have been to Banyuls, and I’ve met Alain and Jordi both, but I worry I’m a shallow interpreter. There’s so much I still don’t know, spaces I’m left to fill in.
The book also goes with the wine because some parts are sexy, I think (some other parts have sex and are not so sexy) and Zaza is a sensual hug of a wine. They can both be very passionate.
If you want to borrow my copy of Dancer from the Dance let me know. There’s nothing underlined. 🌈
And otherwise please let us know if you have any wine questions, concerns, needs. We are here for you always, via email at rainbowwinechi@gmail.com or on instagram dm @rainbow_wines
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