Friday, April 26, 2013

The Devil's Discourse (Parts 1-3)

The Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Company (KalSEC) is the reason I now find myself at the conversational end of a Kalashnakov. At least I think it's a Kalashnakov. It has that sort of resemblance, but who knows? It's a stupid thing to think, I bet. A real gun expert would cluck disapprovingly at my ignorance.

The guy in front of me -- he's no expert either. But he is a criminal. I'm not a criminal, although I have spent substantial time in a South American prison. What I am is something far more mundane -- a businessman, an importer -- but how I got here isn't so mundane at all.

***

Allow me to explain. It all started with a bottle of wine. Vacqueyras -- that was the name of it, or rather the origin. It's a wine I can still smell and taste, almost three decades on. If I go to that quiet place, if I close my eyes and concentrate, the flavors begin to emerge, like silent fireworks. My mind goes dark -- like the wine itself -- and, after a pause: an opening salvo of cassis and peppercorn; a blast of tart cherry zing; a rich layer of fatty smoked pancetta; a finish of candied orange, vanilla, honey and tobacco.

This was the wine that changed my life. I was 33 at the time, restless, resentful and despondent, loathing my lot as an overpaid, soulless middle manager at a middling media company. I wallowed in the west coast malaise.

Ungrateful? Sure. Maybe things weren't so bad back then. In the intervening years I've witnessed worse. I've seen the most thoroughly squalid conditions in my travels, and I've experienced despair the likes of which you've never imagined. Worst of all, I've watched the slow, inexorable corruption of the human spirit.

But I must admit, I've never felt more like a rat in a trap than I did at that time, 33 years old, staring down an eternity of lifeless inconsequentiality. And there was that wine, sitting on my boss' desk for month -- a gift from some person or another. It tempted me. So I decided to steal it.

But like I said, I'm no criminal. And this petty act of rebellion was committed without the foreknowledge of the fabulous, chaotic adventure that would succeed it. I don't have the constitution for crime, but I do for mischief.

***

The French appellation of Vacqueyras is named for the town that sits near the end of a string of villages in the southern Rhone valley. It's a hot, dry and dusty place, closer to Spain or Italy than Paris. The dilapidated Mediterranean port of Marseille isn't too far away.

The local product -- this magical wine -- is a blend of the Grenache, Syrah and Mouvedre varietals. In its youth, straight out of the barrel, it's rocket fuel (such is potency of its alcohol profile). The mere scent will punch you in the nose. Like all good wines it needs to mellow and age, to breathe, to develop character in the long hours and commune with the cosmos.

What results is a meaty, structured and faceted thing. Not stiff but supple -- like a firm handshake. The tannins are silky, the byproduct of letting those Grenache skins sit in contact with the juice. This is the backbone.

It's the Syrah, though, that really makes the difference. It adds that layer of exoticism, of mystique. At the right moments it feels as if the spice trade routes of India are traveling across your tongue. Most of the flavors in there are just out of reach.

But the thing about Vacqueyras, the reason you've never heard of it, is that the town and the wine -- like everything else in the southern Rhone -- exists within the long shadow of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

Châteauneuf is the regional star, the member of the family that made a name for itself while the others labored in obscurity. The eponymous town is a few miles down the road fromVacqueyras, with a gloriously ruined castle overlooking it. And the wines that come from Châteauneuf's vineyards -- well, if you didn't know any better, you'd say they bore a distinct resemblance to their less-heralded cousins down the road. The primary difference is this: Châteauneuf sells for hundreds of dollars a bottle; Vacqueyras is a tenth of that. This little detail will become important, as we shall soon see.

To really understand Vacqueyras, though, and the things it caused me to do, we must go there.