As the wine opened up, the tempo stretched and the melody passed from horn to woodwinds and strings. There appeared scattered signs of life along the edges.
2007 Léoville Barton led the way to the depths of the woods. It was layered but neither dense nor treacherous, like the painting of the forest of Fontainebleau by Narcisse Díaz de la Peña, who, indeed, was a Bordelais artist himself after all.
That supple harmony was short-lived as a mean sourness emerging from the darkness soon forced me to shelve it for the night. However, the descent continued the following day and it got even bloodthirstier than before. I cut some toma on the side to recalibrate to a fresh perspective. In comparison to the new world cheese, the wine was prideful and sardonic.
On the third day it finally settled down. Perhaps out of regret for its previous rashness, or simply drained, it became subdued, while at the same time having developed a new honey-like density, with a bruleed hint on the nose, and red date sweetness.
Château Latour's website describes its 2006 vintage as "a wine that will benefit from very long ageing and that will require a long time in the bottle before showing a more integrated structure".
However, those who wait for a special occasion to open a bottle are certainly doomed to die without ever tasting it. What then can the impatient do? Prolonged decantation might do the job, but forced aeration would only agitate it into a foul mood. Umineko's Revelations turned out to be the solution.
Earth to earth. Illusions to illusions. Sensory illusion it may be, but music is sometimes the oxygen that brings a wine to life, or if tactlessly applied, suffocates it to complete odourlessness.
The labyrinth of grand symphonies would only weigh the already closed wine down further, whereas the doujin song was complex yet light on her feet. As such, even the Latour that was tough like a towering wall decided to soften, and shuffled with the witch in lockstep. The faint eastern spice notes also helped merge the two senses in the mind.
Eight years ago, I was watching the Tokyo Jihen concert Bon Voyage in the comfort of home with a glass of 2010 Roc de Cambes in hand after an eggplant ice cream.
On the stage, Shiina Ringo stood in a velvet dress, long gloves, and a burlesque mini top hat with plumes thrice as tall, while the rest of the band wore red tuxedos. Hearty creamy season was followed by the carnival.
Stealing a moment from which every was a climax, for a split second my eyes gravitated down from the screen to the wine of the same colour, as though it was just a natural extension of the footage which had bled into the glass.
I took a sip - it paired. The boundary had been blurred, unfurling a whole world to explore. The concert that was supposed to be the end-all, the finale, the senshuraku, was to me, the inception.
When the audience waved their flags, I swirled my Bordeaux glass. Kameda-shishou would waltz to the quasi-latin beat that took on a less rustic feel thanks to the compression. A little distorted, compressed together, the beat, the wine and my heightened emotions all blended with a large orchestral backing like a cruise ship sailing forth at full speed.
The perfume of 2015 Domaine Gros Frère et Sœur Vosne-Romanée Premier Cru does not leak out of the top of the glass.
It patiently waits for one to lean in, and once close enough, pulls one into its bosom at the bowl's bottom where it is dense and lush.
The wine's scent immediately brought me back to a countryside dinner opening its elder sibling 2012 Richebourg to roast quail with onion. Long term potentiation has always been a fascinating mechanism in my experience, almost too good to be real. The homunculus inside is a sedulous librarian.
At home I cured pork belly trimming leftovers with French grey salt and black pepper lightly in the image of a fake pancetta, which in turn doubled as a fake guanciale for a tagliatelle carbonara. Such abundant fakeness and coup against the authentic recipe were necessary in order to meet the finicky Burgundy on the opposite shore. Estragon replacing Pecorino Romano was the final link to put the Italian to rest for good.
In search of motion and a puff of fresh air, I played Nijikan dake no vacance for the light-minded wine. Shiina Ringo's voice alone was too bright and Utada Hikaru's too lean, but when overlaid they fused into a third whose tone happened to be just right.
The more air the wine swallowed the more coquettish it became, and it craved constant attention from the rhythm of the tune with its cold and gentle feather-touches. Nevertheless, it maintained a needle-like precision always, as though that was an inseparable Apollonian quality of its existence no matter how drunk.