Obviously it has been summer for a while now. The openness of the season with its later sunset, free feeling of jacketless, pantless limbs, and the open hearts these encourage can make time feel like a blurred sprawl. Beautiful, heartbreaking, exhausting. Which is fine, August is often the time for a break, though not one observed in our culture. I think again about red wine season. About suggesting grolleau to our friend Kat at Rainbow’s post-storm party. Diagnosing our mutual craving for red fruit saying in simultaneity that the structure of the juice makes us feel contained and making a small gesture with our hands like we were holding the little box we hoped to put ourselves in. To wrangle that sprawl.
Some of my colleagues would be highly critical of this gesture. To suggest flatly that summer is the season for any wine. Most wines don’t really have a season and especially with delays on the shipping and logistics end of things it is wise to loosen expectations about what you’re drinking at what time. And more generously I think these detractors want people to be afforded maximum pleasure and that certain marketing campaigns can interfere with one’s grasp on the texture of the moment. This is obviously fair and it’s easy to react and decry “weather blogging” as a whole but I want to (gently!) suggest that it may be too heady to ignore the weather. That wine is for our bodies as well as our minds and our hearts.
To drink red wine in the summer can help you feel the heat of something sticky, rich, and a little sweet. Bring the heat in so you don’t feel such a contrast on your skin. Or with something like Kat and I crave, a tannin to press against your spirit. A flexible option, your choice guided by how much spine you need to borrow. Or gentler still red wine is sometimes rosé, offering refreshment with an occasional side of moodiness. No wonder it’s the summer staple. No matter the shade, I recommend to start your red wine too cold (but not so cold as to permanently deaden its energy), it will come to temp quickly enough and in the meantime you get to hold the bowl of the glass in your hand. It's a treat trust me.
This year too I will have some steak with this wine. When I have the energy to cook this is all I want. And it usually comes with the excuse to invite someone over. Someone who is likely also tired and craves a steak, because it is August and we are all tired. The time I had my sister over she helped term this craving and practice, “summer steak”. I like to cook steaks in a cast iron on my stove top, adding some aromatics halfway through; rosemary, thyme, garlic, shallot. Sometimes finished with butter but usually I forget, plus I think olive oil is more summer steak. I like to serve it with different things every time, different preparations of potatoes and a rotating cast of salads that could also double as sandwich toppings. Simple arugula, marinated pepper and eggplant, tomato herb, this green bean salad I made up a few years ago with a caper, almond, raisin dressing. Once I draped the thickest anchovies I could find in the city over the slices. Was perfect with some chewy grenache from Toni Sanchez-Ortiz in Priorat. One of the most Chicago wines which offered a rare moment of still for me and my friends. Bless the silence that falls upon a table of people enjoying a meal together.
