A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu

[VouvrayHead]

At some point in our lives, we’ve all experience what I’m about to describe, but as a point of reference, I will mention the first-rate Pixar film Ratatouille, which, if you have not seen, you must rent soon, preferably while it is still cold out. If you have not seen it, then please skip to the next paragraph so its beautiful conclusion is not ruined. The scene I refer to is when skeptical Ego, the curmudgeon-food-critic, finally takes a single bite of Remy’s ratatouille and his world is shaken, his profession dissolves and his adult world, his conceptions and tribulations, his fame and his knowledge all become meaningless as he is whisked back into his childhood. The camera hovers over his countryside house with a crashed bicycle in the yard and we see young Ego, crying, skinned-knee and all, being comforted by his warm loving mother and her warm loving ratatouille. We return to the present with Ego, and his whole life again has meaning, again has ground beneath it, again finds truth in food and he gently asks to speak to the chef.


The film is about the meaning of food. It’s about how food connects with memory and emotion, sating more than just the stomach. I had a wine this afternoon that provided a similar experience for me. It wasn’t a great wine, or even a particularly good wine, but it smells (and smell is the sense with the most direct association with memory) exactly like my grandmother’s house. After my grandfather died when I was seven years old, my grandmother sold her house and bought a condo. She passed away 4 years ago. I hadn’t thought about that old house in a long time, and only remember it in bits and pieces. But this wine brought it back sharply and lovingly. I can’t say what it smells like much more than “It smells like my grandmother’s house,” but it does smell a lot like roses (she grew hundreds, it seemed like, of rose bushes), a lot like whatever perfume she used to wear, and a bit like musty mothballs. It’s been a wonderful, fulfilling experience drinking it.


It’s an $11 bottle of 2008 Traminette (A Gewurz hybrid, I assume) from Strussione vineyards in Ste. Genevieve, Mo. It tastes like my grandmother’s house to me, but I don’t know what it would taste like to you.