Bertrand Russell may have looked like God—piercing eyes, white hair, son of the Duke of Bedford, that sort of thing. But he was a philosopher not noted for an enthusiastic belief in the Divine. When asked what he would say when he got to Heaven, he replied in clipped tones, “‘God’, I will say, ‘you are a very mean fellow. You did not give us enough evidence to go on.’” Many restaurant wine lists seem to operate on the same divine principle. I know someone who was driven to ordering “vin rouge” from one particularly pretentious list—not red wine, you understand, but vin rouge.
More often you look down the list under the appraising eye of someone who thinks you ought to be able to make wise decisions about wine (if about nothing else in life) and you see no more than the name of a grape variety, “Syrah,” and the maker’s name, “Joe.” You shut your eyes, hope for the best and state your choice, humming the while, “Che Syrah Syrah, whatever will be will be.” Which is of course not just the first line of a cheesy pop song. “Che Sara Sara” is the motto of the Duke of Bedford, which is why you see it all over the place in London—especially near the British Museum, long owned by the Duke of Bedford (Bertrand Russell, again).
Sometimes you’re lucky. A pithy line on a wine list the other evening, “Pinot Noir, Kenwood” introduced a really pleasing bottle and prompted a spot of reflection. It would be a pity to have had the experience and missed the meaning. What was there to know about this wine? Let’s try induction.
Kenwood is more likely to be named for a Californian town than the homonymous manufacturer of kitchen appliances or the upmarket mosquito breeding-ground of Minneapolis. Pinot Noir is the grape the French use to make the nectar known as Burgundy. (Did B. Russell feel that nectar was wasted on the Gods?) So this was going to be red and probably stronger, fruitier, and more voluptuous (I nearly said full-bodied, but you know what I mean) than many table wines. The bottle itself provided more information. It announced its year (2000) and the area it came from—the Russian River Valley, a misty wooded cleft in the California coast first settled by Russian fur-trappers in the early 19th century, as they spread south from Alaska (at that time Russian territory). It said that it contained 13.8 percent alcohol by volume, which was cheering but not of course the most important point. And on the back it said it had been aged in French oak barrels for a year (oak imparts its own taste), had a smooth finish, and should not be drunk when I was pregnant (pretty safe there; B. Russell too) or about to drive. Helpful, all of that, but only pointers to the empirical pleasure of pouring a glass and examining it with as many senses as are decent and legal. The eye saw a good deep red, the nose detected the sort of smell you might get if you cross-pollinated a garden rose with a bottle of brandy, the good round taste suggested that after the first glass a second might be an enormously good idea. It was the mind, though, which suggested that this was a drink less analogous to Burgundy than to Port, an Old World wine with few Californian equivalents (though there is an intriguing wine wittily named Starboard).
Only experience will enable you to verify my observations. I thought this a wine delightful in itself, a Ding an Sich. At significantly more than $15 a bottle, this is a bit more expensive than most of the wines which make their way into this column, but I certainly thought it was worth it. Would Bertrand Russell? Can we know what is in Other Minds? It is easier to sample the evidence and make up our own.
Oliver Nicholson is a classicist at the University of Minnesota, and former Secretary of the Wine Committee at Wolfson College, Oxford.
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