A Glass Act: In conclusion, the last pour of wine

What is true sophistication? Is it having “Dr.” in front of your name — possible, though our academic trajectories make this a long-term question at best. Is it the ability to recite poetry without stumbling? We composed one to test the theory:

There once were two men from Stearns County, who reviewed wine on a columnist’s bounty. They started with box, ignored all the knocks, and finished with something more mounty.

Mounty is not a word. We are keeping it anyway.

Is sophistication sitting in quiet contemplation of life’s great questions — spirituality, love, the inexplicable appeal of the Freakshowlabel? Many could argue. We have a different answer, and we arrived at it the same way we arrive at most of our answers: with a glass in hand and nowhere else to be.

Sophistication is the raised eyebrow. The considered pause after the first sip. The moment you set the glass down not because it’s empty but because you want to think about what just happened. We didn’t know that when we started this column. We thought wewere doing a bit. It turns out the bit was doing us.

This week’s bottle, consumed while arguing about the above, is Campo Viejo Rioja Tempranillo 2021. La Rioja, Spain — a region that has been making wine since before the concept of a college newspaper existed, which we consider relevant context. 100 percent Tempranillo, 13.5 percent alcohol, roughly eleven dollars at Total Wine & More. Produced by Bodegas Campo Viejo — a house that advertises, with considerable enthusiasm, that winemaking here is driven by passion. We can confirm the passion arrived in thebottle. We cannot confirm it arrived in our tasting notes, which were composed under conditions we will describe only as “field work.”

Look: Cherry red. Clear. The color of a wine that has nothing to hide and knows it.

Nose: Red cherry, vanilla, warm spice from the oak. Clean, approachable, the kind of nose that does not require you to stand over the glass like a detective at a crime scene.

Taste: Here is where Campo Viejo earns its eleven dollars with something approaching violence. The fruit hits like bold bubble letters on a comic book fight page — not POW, exactly, more like WHAM with a ZZIP chasing it. Cherry, raspberry, a quiet cocoa note inthe background doing the supporting-cast work that is invisible when present and catastrophic when missing. It surprised us. We looked at each other. We consulted a wise friend of ours, whose counsel on such matters is both brief and correct: “Where there’s one, there’s two.” Simple words. Profound implications. We poured accordingly.

Finish: Warm, medium length, exits cleanly. Unlike certain leading Broadway ladies — Norma Desmond comes to mind, unable to read a cue and convinced the cameras are still rolling — this wine knows when its scene is over and leaves the stage with its dignity intact.

Serve it right: Room temperature. Open, pour, drink. Campo Viejo is not precious at eleven dollars, and it has the good sense to know it.

Pairings: The end of something. A year of columns, a semester of opinions issued without credentials or apology. Whatever Reefcalls dinner. The company of someone who has been there for the whole run.

Verdict: A 92-point Rioja at eleven dollars, consumed while settling our accounts with a year of drinking wine we mostly couldn’tafford and writing about it with authority we mostly didn’t have. It punches above its weight, earns more than it costs, and asks for nothing in return. We have been accused of all three. We are choosing to take them as compliments.

Rating: 8.7/10

Now. The retrospective.

The Black Box Sauvignon Blanc opened our argument in September: that what’s in the vessel matters more than what the vessellooks like. Three liters, a spigot, fourteen dollars. We remain proud of this finding and slightly embarrassed by how proud we are.

The Freakshow proved the opposite — a lion-headed ringmaster compensating for a wine that tasted like grape soda went off tocollege and started calling itself complex. The circus promised performers. The performers called in sick. So did we — on the review, not the bottle.

The Tapiz Malbec briefly gave us the delusion that we were people who spend twenty dollars on wine. The Prati Cabernet arrived in February wearing a suit to a gas station, cost seventeen dollars, and introduced the concept of standards into our lives without consent. By the second glass, one of us used a coaster unprompted. We have not discussed this since.

Ken Wright Cellars arrived as a gift, cost eighty-three dollars, triggered an auditory hallucination involving Chuck Mangione, and permanently recalibrated our expectations in a direction our budget cannot follow. We hold the reader who sent it fully responsible.

The Woodbridge Boxed Pinot arrived via reader debate, paired with mascarpone and Tabasco jam — on purpose — and prompted observations that we have been “filling out our clothes more these days.” We consider this the natural consequence of living the good life for the common good. The elliptical is there. We have chosen wine.

And then Kirkland Classic Red Sangria. Seven dollars. Six percent. The color of a rosé that received bad news and quietly stopped trying. After 1.5 liters we were completely, mercilessly sober — aware of our choices, aware of each other, having felt preciselynothing except a lot of orange. We finished it anyway. That’s the whole story.

Worst wine of the year: Kirkland Classic Red Sangria. Many notes. No regrets. Every drop gone.

Best wine of the year: Ken Wright Cellars. The triumph. The elixoir. The finish that emboldened us to exaspeorate our student loans.

We began as translators. We end as something closer to converts. It turns out wine is not about credentials. It’s about paying attention long enough for something to tell you what it is. About being willing to be wrong — about France, about boxes, about whether six percent is even worth the glass. We were wrong about France… Wine. We still have an American disdain for France. The Bordeaux Blanc was fifteen dollars and completely faultless and we remain not happy about it.

It has been our honor. The column is concluded. The bottle, as always, is not.

— Gabe Evenocheck & Ben Bugbee Committee for Collegiate Viticulture Studies, now disbanded by graduation and the general passage of time

(This column is intended for readers 21 and older. It has always been. We assume you complied. We chose not to investigate.)