By Al Drinkle
Last night, Sticky and I attended a screening of Orsen Welles’ Touch of Evil which was stunning on the big screen. It’s a delight to watch a particularly corpulent Welles stumble about in this darkest of noir and the film precedes Psycho by two years as an example of how things can go south when Janet Leigh checks into a motel room. It was amidst this backdrop that we were unexpectedly mesmerized by an amazing backpack bottle of Mondeuse from André and Michel Quenard.
The Mondeuse was more than wine; it was a transcendental, situationally transmogrifying teleportation serum. As Welles proceeded with an inebriated border-town rampage on-screen, we were enchanted by the sylvan allure of this most caressing of alpine wines. It foraged a veritable mountain of the tiniest, most delicate red berries and gently placed them upon our palates in an undeserved act of reverential adulation. It displayed to us the placidity of altitudinous lakes, their surfaces only occasionally disturbed by the panic of a Mexican Charlton Heston (?!?!?). In dulcet tones and upon the breath of morning dew it whispered of its relationship to Syrah, reminiscing about the cured meats that it so effortlessly pairs with and of the alpine herbs that share its vineyards… or maybe that was just the “jazz cigarettes” forced upon a hapless Janet Leigh?
I recall that over a decade ago during my sommelier diploma courses, the instructor complacently mentioned Savoie’s existence in passing, claiming that its wines were qualitatively unimportant. I had to go all the way to this idyllic, culturally hybridized French region on the Swiss border to experience its indigenous grapes like Mondeuse! Now, thanks to Richard Harvey and other intrepid wine professionals, all that you have to do to check out benchmark examples of Savoie wine is shop at Metrovino.
