March 16, 2010

A friend came over to dinner the other night with a bottle of wine that he described as “interesting.”

“Interesting” is one of those loaded words that can mean different things depending on the context. It can be an affirmation that someone is on the right track, as in, “He’s doing interesting things with pinot noir up in Sonoma.” Or “interesting” can mean the equivalent of a movie that you don’t really understand. On this night, the wine was a white from Italy, made by nuns in the Montefalco region, an area known for its idiosyncratic indigenous grapes. After swirling, sniffing and slurping this “interesting” little wine, I told my friend that, while I appreciated what Our Ladies of the Vineyard had concocted, I’ve recently come to appreciate a different kind of wine.