There is a lurking conviction in American society that there’s something wrong with drinking alone. That the person who drinks alone is stained with melancholy or filled with lack or attempting to forget. Of course, this is true for some. I, however, enjoy drinking alone. I don’t mean in the sorrowful tear-in-my-beer kind of way—rarely will I imbibe if feeling gloomy (I am of Irish blood that didn’t fare well in the gloom-led drinking department)—but rather in the way of contemplative pleasure. I’m an introvert at heart, and feel nourished when I have the luxury of hoarding my time for myself, an occurrence as rare as the filled and paved pothole. It’s especially rare to open a bottle, pour myself a glass, and wander off to my own devices as I have this winter evening.
In her 1949 An Alphabet for Gourmets, MFK Fisher writes in the first chapter “A is for dining Alone” of holing up in a Hollywood studio apartment where she is working on scripts, subsisting on tins of fish and glasses of sherry, calling her desire to eat alone “a misanthropic attitude." She says, "There are few people alive with whom I care to pray, sleep, dance, sing or share my bread and wine.” I can’t say I feel misanthropic in my craving for solitude, but at this stage of life, with the crush of business, the delight/gravity of raising a small human, the low-grade tension of a world and a city that is crumbling and hurting, I do feel indulgent when I can receive the short and subtle quiet of a drink alone.
January feels a good time to slip into this liminal space. To allow oneself the time to be without company. The short quiet before millions descend for Super Bowl and Mardi Gras and festival season. Some of you might take the time to not drink at all. I myself have never participated in dry January or a dry month of any sort—the closest I’ve come is a five-day hike on the Appalachian trail, dreaming of cold vermentino and red meat and pasta. Thankfully, my constitution is one of small pleasures in moderation, including a quiet glass of wine balanced on the edge of the bathtub on a very cold January night, watching the windows condense with steam and the bridge light up smudgy purple beyond them.
The wines I feel are best for drinking alone are those that make me slow down, both in pace and in thought, that require another layer of feeling and consideration. I can’t explain in material terms what ties these wines together, but, they each have a quality I require when the opportunity for solitude presents itself.
Of course, share when you feel compelled, but don't worry when you don't. Take care of each other. Be safe. —LP
CVNE “Monopole Clásico” Blanco Seco, Rioja, Spain 2018
Once upon a time, the venerable house of CVNE (Compañia Vinicola del Norte de España) produced a storied wine called Monopole. This was over 100 years ago, and it was composed mostly of viura—Rioja’s most famous white grape, also called macabeo in France—dosed with a little bit of manzanilla sherry. (Get a load of this marketing campaign.) But as tastes changed in the latter half of the 20th century, the wine was simplified and the sherry eliminated. Eventually, CVNE resurrected the style, aging the wine in large neutral oak barrels and adding back in that bit of sherry, this time sourced from the Hidalgo family, which produces La Guita, the platonic ideal of manzanilla, salty, nutty, beguiling. Coincidentally, La Guita is not available here, so this is the only way you may legally purchase it in the great state of Louisiana. The result is a revival of Spain’s oldest white wine, and time travel into what tastes were like a century ago.
If I had my way, half of the wine shop would be given over to wines like this one. I am enamored with the mysterious, mistral-like quality of sherry—dry as bones, but soulful with salty, strange marrow. Even just a little bit transforms viura into something spiritual, rich yet lean, primal yet a little baroque. A steely chain adorned with a velvet tassel.
Bobinet “Aunis” Loire Valley, France 2023
Last year, we welcomed another pineau d’aunis from Pascal Janvier into the wine club. I remember writing about how it was pure teleportation to childhood, standing out in a summer rain, smelling the hot blacktop absorb the cool wet of an Ohio thunderstorm. Bobinet’s Aunis is a more subtle manifestation of the grape, slightly cooler in demeanor yet still lively in the way that pineau d’aunis is—peppered petrichor and soft stones, a kind of washed silk texture.
Over the last year, we’ve been thrilled with the wines we’ve experienced from Sébastien Bobinet and his partner Emeline Calvez (we have four in the shop right now). Their subtle sense of style permeates each cuvée, rendering them at once beautiful, threaded with a wink of knowing mischief. Well-paired with old YouTube videos of Martha Graham and or Karen Russell’s short stories.
JP Rietsch “Coquette” Alsace, France 2023
Is it orange, is it rosé? We do not know. It’s one of the mythical creatures that inhabits space between worlds, a place we love to visit when we can locate its hidden entrance. A blend of equal parts riesling, pinot noir, and gewurtzraminer, this bottle was a unanimous hit with the shop’s team when we tasted it this fall. Our tastes range widely, from Burgundy-heads to farm funk freaks, and somehow, this little sprite drew each of us in with its iridescent pink charm and spiced aromatics.
The producer, Jean-Pierre Rietsch, is raising vines on land that has been in his family for seven generations, once a tobacco farm, turned diversified agriculture, shephereded into vineyards. All farming is done without chemicals, harvests are manual, and wines range from serious pinot noirs to playful skin contact cuvées to gorgeous crèmant bubbles. In the shop, we have the skin contact Entre Chien et Loup, fuzzy-wuzzy Crèmant d’Alsace, and a liter o' white blend Tout Blanc.
Sesti “Toscana Rosato” Sangiovese, Tuscany, Italy 2022
Founded by an astronomer in the abandoned ruins of a castle in Montalcino, Sesti produces some of my favorite wines from Tuscany. Giuseppe Maria Sesti’s wines were born simply; he observed and assisted neighboring estates in their own winemaking and combined his renaissance sprezzatura + knowledge of environmental balance to create phenomenal wines of transparent terroir.
Rosé is for all seasons, but there are some which are better considered for winter climes. Made with sangiovese, the region’s regal red grape, Sesti’s rosato is done saignée method, wherein the juice from crushed red grapes is removed and fermented separately from the skins to maintain a high concentration of flavor and color. It’s fresh, yet savory, laced with an herbal melody, also a bit restrained when compared to the quaffable juices of Provence or the juicy, nattier dreams younger Italian producers. Wrap yourself up in a blanket, and drink with some brothy beans.
Danilo Thomain “Enfer d’Arvier” Valle d’Aosta, Italy 2021
What do I think about when I’m alone? How to escape capitalism while still collecting passive income; the plot holes in Station Eleven; if I will ever read Proust and not fall asleep; when I might find the time to undertake Champagne Sauerkraut again; and traveling to places like the Valle d’Aosta, a teensy autonomous region in northwestern Italy, which shares an Alpine border with France and Switzerland. It’s dramatic snow-capped mountains, crystal-clear azure lakes, castles in stone villages, stewy polenta, silken fonduta, and wines that have wild acid and luscious depth. It’s Italy’s smallest wine-growing region, a size that belies its operatic weather and ancient terrain.
Danilo Thomain grows grapes on a hectare of land located in an amphitheater in the Enfer d’Arvier or “the hell of Arvier,” named for its whiplash diurnal shifts. He’s the only producer in the the Arvier to independently bottle his wines, the remainder of vineyards cultivated for co-op production. Made from the thick-skinned petit rouge grape, Thomain’s Enfer is bright and generous, with wonderful tension between zippy acid and dense, crystalline fruit. It has kinship with the best red wines of Switzerland and the French Alps: a feeling of looking into a deep, deep lake and yet still being able to see the bottom, a trick of human perception, the feeling of knowing, but not being able to quite reach the furthest depth.