For a few years, it was hard to read more than a few pages at a time.
Not for lack of wanting.
A page. Then “Daddy, Daddy” from the next room. Then work. Then the dishes.
Around then, I heard David Whyte read The Bell and the Blackbird.
Two calls.
One toward the life in front of you.
One further in.
For a long time, I heard one of them as the interruption.
My wife. My kids. The work. The day itself.
I’m less sure now.
Some weeks I go further in.
Most weeks, I answer the day.
Around then, a colleague pointed me toward Japanese death poems.
We’d met years earlier, when I was exploring a mindfulness practice. Before children.
We hadn’t talked in a long time.
A few lines each.
Short enough to read between the two calls.
Wine asks for the same kind of time.
I don’t always have it.
A few weeks ago at Costco, two grower Champagnes.
Moussé. Marc Hébrart.
Names I’d heard. Not bottles I knew.
I turned them around.
Skurnik. Both.
That was enough.
Later, at home, the Gimonnet. My go-to.
Same name again.
Three growers. Three very different wines.
Someone had tasted all of them before I did.
Three Bottles
Famille Moussé L’Esquisse Extra Brut
The bottle that isn’t my style, and is worth it anyway.
76% Meunier. 24% Pinot Noir.
Not a drop of Chardonnay.
You can taste the absence.
Very aromatic.
White flowers. Underripe pear. Maybe a little almond.
None of the lemon-lime, green apple, and chalk I typically reach for.
It’s rounder through the palate.
Then the middle turns mineral. Structured.
It reminds me more of a northern Italian white than of Champagne.
Floral up front. Stone underneath.
That contrast is where the personality lives.
Where it fits: an evening when you want to taste outside your usual lane.
Would I buy it? Yes. Not as a staple. As a way to explore.
What you’re paying for: Meunier with nowhere to hide, dry and aromatic, with texture in place of Chardonnay tension.
Price: $39.99 at Costco when I found it.
Where to find it:
K&L Wine Merchants
Wine-Searcher for additional availability.
Pierre Gimonnet Cuis Premier Cru Blanc de Blancs
The bottle I measure the others against.
I’ve written about this one before, in On Roots.
It’s here for a different reason.
After the Moussé, I wanted the reference point.
All Chardonnay.
Lemon. Chalk. Salt.
Lean. Precise.
Everything the Moussé isn’t.
Where it fits: oysters, something briny, the start of a dinner.
Would I buy it? Yes. Whenever I want to remember what classic Blanc de Blancs tastes like.
What you’re paying for: chalk, precision, and a grower’s Chardonnay at a price that still makes sense.
Where to find it
K&L Wine Merchants — $54.99
Woodland Hills Wine Company — $44.95
Check Wine-Searcher for additional availability.
Marc Hébrart Mareuil-sur-Aÿ Premier Cru Rosé
The one I bought on the back label.
Last issue I wrote about how it tasted.
Blood orange and pastry cream, once it had thirty minutes. Full notes in Dose Notes #3.
What mattered here was why I picked it up.
I didn’t know this bottling.
But I knew the name on the back.
Price: about $50 at Costco when I found it.
Where to find it
Costco, when available.
Woodland Hills Wine Company
How I Buy
Here is the useful part.
If you don’t know the bottle, don’t automatically default to the label you recognize.
Turn it around.
There are two things I look for.
1. Who brought it here?
The importer.
The good ones taste far more wine than you or I ever will.
They travel, choose, reject, and slowly build a portfolio.
Over time, some names become useful signals.
Skurnik is one of mine.
Not a guarantee.
A reason to look closer.
2. Who made it?
Somewhere in the small print, there’s usually a two-letter code.
RM — Récoltant-Manipulant
A grower-producer making Champagne primarily from grapes they grow.
NM — Négociant-Manipulant
A producer allowed to buy grapes or wine in addition to using its own.
Neither is automatically better.
The Moussé, a family grower since 1923, says NM.
The code tells you something about how the wine came to exist.
Not how good it is.
Following
My colleague pointed.
I followed.
A poet pointed.
I followed.
I still do this more than I realized.
A book.
A bottle.
A name in small print on the back label.
端的是れ什麼ぞと看よ
恁麼に看ば必ず相い錯らざらん
Tanteki kore nanzo to miyo
inmo ni mireba kanarazu ai ayamarazaran
Look.
Here.
What is it?
See it
as it is,
and you will not
go wrong.
— Bassui Tokushō, death poem, 1387
Until the next bottle,
Manj
P.S. Whose recommendation do you follow almost without thinking? It doesn’t have to be wine. I read every email.
Bassui, for the record, forbade his students so much as a drop.
I follow him only partway.