Earlier today, I saw Marcel Guigal sitting in a Toyota Avalon. The luminary of the northern Rhone, right here in River City driving...a Toyota? I rolled down my window and said, "Excuse me, but aren't you--"

"Marcel Guigal?" he finished for me, without a trace of a French accent.

"Um...yeah."

"I get that a lot." Really? I'd expect that if he looked like Clooney or something, but Marcel Guigal? I couldn't wait to see where this was going.

"So, when's the '09 Condrieu going to hit the shelf?" I asked.

"Soon. The Viognier came in more beautifully than I can remember in '09, you know."

"Yeah, but I bet you were saying that in '07 as well."

"True, but I still haven't had a hit such as this one since the one I had in '95--that was another amazing wine."

This guy could play along with the great masters. Was he a spy? Probably. He was sent, of course, to spy on me. Not that I can think of any knowledge I possess that would be of interest to a spy, other than the nuclear launch codes for the Ohio River Valley missile range. The codes change every time I think of a new number. Sometimes I have a hard time keeping up--I have to concentrate hard on NOT thinking of a new number every time we do a missile test, otherwise, unauthorized access alarms go off and you know what a pain that can be, with MPs crawling all over the place, looking at you with raised eyebrows, questioning your immigration status, asking to see your ID badge over and over.

"I hate to take exception with Your Eminence," I said, "but you've had several great vintages of Condrieu in the past 15 years."

"Yes, but none that felt like getting a letter from a lover you are desperate to see, but who has gone away...that '95 was a letter from Celeste, whom I haven't seen in thirty years."

"Unresolved love, huh? So who's the '09 a letter from?"

"Marie-Ange...I can see her now, as she was when we were 16. We were very much in love."

"What happened to her?"

"She moved to Paris."

"And never wrote you?"

"Oh she wrote to me--every other day! But I'm terrible at writing back, and she thought I was losing interest since I only wrote every three or four weeks."

"But did you write good letters?"

"Of course!!! Do you think that I could do anything other than commit my wounded heart to paper for such a one as Marie-Ange?"

This guy is good. "Sorry...I don't know Marie-Ange."

"Surely you have your own Marie-Ange?"

"I do."

"What's her name?"

"She's all around me."

"Her name?"

"Everywhere."

"Everywhere?"

"Even between my fingers."

"Her name?!? Is it Everywhere?"

"No. I cannot name her, but she is there, but only when I'm not looking for her."

"Ah," he said. "I see that you also have visions of angels."

Visions of angels.... I drifted. He continued:

"Mine keep drinking my wine before bottling."

"The angel's share...of course.... Mine give me a wellspring of happiness so consuming and profound...the overall feeling is, oddly enough, sadness."

"Which is how I feel as I see them crowded around my barrels. It's nice to see the angels enjoying my wine, but I could have sold that wine," he said with a laugh that quickly faded. "But that's not what you mean."

"No."

"Do you feel it now?"

"I feel the memory of it."

"That's all I have left of my wines and love letters."

"You're not Marcel Guigal."

"No."

"Then what do you want?"

"It was you who rolled down the window to speak to me."

"I think you're a spy."

"Can I have the launch codes?"

"Can I have some Condrieu?"

"All I've got is Cote-Rotie. They told me that's the first association you'd make."

"I've always been different. I like it now, but I didn't so much in grade school. It's one of those things that helps me keep secrets."

"Are there really launch codes? I was just trying to be clever."

"Is there really any Condrieu? I'm just getting thirsty."

"Fine." He produced, with slight hesitation, a green bottle with a gold label. Guigal La Doriane from 2007. "It's my last bottle. I'm taking one in the groin for you."

I pulled a glass out of my pocket, popped the cork, poured and took a long sniff. Honeysuckle, peaches, almonds, wheat germ?, white flowers...orange blossoms. And tangerine.

"You're also going to have to take one for me on the launch codes," I said, not without kindness.

He smiled a bland smile. "You--okay...why can't I have the launch codes?"

"Because the reason that I am the only one who knows them is that when I get flustered or pressured my brain starts racing uncontrollably. I change the codes so rapidly that even I can't keep up with them, so they're safe. I'm the ultimate defense. I'd've been terrible in the Army--who wants a guy freezing up on them in a foxhole?--but this...this is a job I can do. Who is 'they'?"

"I was just making 'them' up in the grand tradition of this whole conversation. Are you a pathological liar?"

"No. Just an engaging storyteller." I looked at him, a forlorn look growing on his face. "Got a glass?"

"Oh...um...," he reached over into his backseat, "yeah."

I poured him some and we drank in silence, there behind our steering wheels. The Fake Frenchman said, "Well this is quite a sight, drinking and parking. You know, I still have to drive home...mind if I take the bottle?"

"I do actually. I'll pour you an extra glass though."

"I'd have to drink it now, and then I can't drive home."

"That's the idea," I said. "It's time you saw your angels somewhere else."

Popularity: 12% [?]

Canst there be any greater honor than to don the vestiture of that noble poet, a chronicler of sooth, purveyor of wicked humor, and parabolist of tragedy, on this, the day of his birth? Aye, even better 't would it be to write him right.

So here goes.

At the Sign of The Prancing Pony

Come, come good shepherd of the vine, and drink
Of fruit thou grew to know through sun and moon.
Cast off thy livery upon the brink,
Earth's dear bequest shalt bear our merry tune!
Ah, yon's the lass once mine, ne'er was I so bless'd,
Her thriftless beauty maketh me to nip.
Next bot'le I drain, forsaking my dear guest,
Doleful, obsessed, the host is now a dip!
Oh, now must face the furrow of thy teeth
Or quail beneath the gnashing of thy brow
I'm fey!--nay stow thy bayo in its sheath,
Instead, the young, fair wench's not worth the row:
My lot tis this inexorable funk--
It happens ever only I'm when drunk!

A Righteous Good Entertainment

And because I can't get enough of baseball, Shakespeare performed well, and Abbot and Costello, this is marvelous fun that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with wine.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Wine writer Burke Morton, jack of all trades, master of two (according to him), narrowly avoided a date with the undertaker after opening a bottle of wine. He stabbed himself with the worm of his corkscrew while trying to remove a stubborn cork from a bottle of '97 Marcel Deiss Engelgarten Riesling. His sixth and final bottle of Engelgarten almost turned out to be his last bottle ever.

"The damn cork on that wine...I've never gotten one out without it breaking. Spongy and brittle from the very beginning--worse than the cork on an old bottle of Chateau Musar!" Morton said from his hospital bed, clearly expecting me to know what he is talking about. "It made me so mad that I stabbed myself when I tried to slam the corkscrew back in to get the rest of the cork, but I missed the bottle and got my left index finger. That's what I get for being so hot-headed."

When Morton struck his finger, the corkscrew didn't go all the way through the skin, but only got the top layers. Apparently that was the problem. "A staph infection got in between the layers of skin, and...well, my wave is now one finger shy of a hand."

Morton, a classically trained musician, was remarkably sanguine about losing a finger, but the percocet may have been helping to dull more than just the pain: "Well, I wasn't a very good pianist anyway, though I sure will miss shredding like Hendrix." Even so, he manages to look at the bright side, "I like to learn, and now I'll have to relearn the home row."

Speaking with Morton's doctor, it becomes clear just how confused Morton has become. "A staph infection? Could be, but what makes him think that, I wonder? Does he think he lost his finger because of Impetigo? I haven't seen an adult with that in ages. He had a Felon infection, which I can tell you is quite painful, but we don't know what caused it. It could have been Staphylococcus aureus, but since we cut the thing off, we didn't bother to culture it--couldn't afford to because of cut backs from his insurance company."

Aside from the snarky doctor's breach of HIPAA laws, perhaps that's the bigger story here.

Popularity: 12% [?]

August 6--International relations between the United States and Canada were soured last Saturday by an incident at the Michigan/Ontario border.

Returning from vacation in northern Ontario the Morton family were deep into day two of their drive. The old trapper's town of Temagami (pop. 1,000) and its eponymous lake were the environs of the vacation, and a more beautiful place on Earth would be difficult to find. After a week in the semi-seclusion of a cottage on a lake so crystal clear you can still see the bottom fifty feet down, seven-year-old Sebastian knew it was too good to be true.

"I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. It hit me in the head with a colossal waste of time at the border crossing."

Anticipating the madhouse created by the construction rerouting at the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit, the family chose to cross back into the US through Port Huron, MI.

Port Huron looked like smooth sailing upon approach. "We even took a pit stop before we crossed over," says Burke Morton, 37. "Thank God we did!" When they got back into the car and began to climb the bridge, there were three lanes, the far right marked with an overhead sign reading "CARS"; the middle lane marked with a sign for "TRUCKS"; the left-hand lane had a credulity-straining sign over it reading "Vintage Tractors".

Mr. Morton: "Vintage Tractors? My first thought was that since this was farm country for both Ontario and Michigan, it didn't seem too implausible for there to be a tractor lane, and perhaps some Amish-looking German Anabaptists would chug past on their way to do some freelance plowing across the border." Doubting there was such a community in Port Huron, MI or Sarnia, Ontario, the family pressed on, but as they reached the zenith of the bridge, they could see a Vintage Tractor Parade beginning.

Hulking & Sleek Machines
"The tractors weren't on our side of the bridge, they were heading into Canada. We were a bit disappointed that we would miss seeing it, because it sounded to me like good, quirky fun," says Mr. Morton's wife Cynthia, 34. "We could see a bit of the tractors through the bridge railings, and we even saw a combine, but it really wasn't a rewarding view."

Cars piled up at the check point. The Morton's mini-van was three cars from the Border Agent's booth--tantalizingly close to freedom. "We waited for an hour. We started worrying about some kind of border lock-down--had they found drugs? An illegal immigrant? Explosives? And then out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a vintage tractor returning from Canada!" At this point Morton started ranting things that cannot be printed in a family publication, but he was, according to his wife, not the only one frustrated by this.

"I got out of the car with the kids and walked over to the side of the bridge to watch the parade. I figured we might as well make the most of it, and my husband wasn't really fun to be around just then. We were joined by lots of other wives and kids, too."

Having regained his composure and looking a bit sheepish, Mr. Morton tried to save his dignity by saying that "people all around were worked-up and getting angrier at the ridiculous parade, because they didn't actually use the designated 'Vintage Tractor' lane. There were at least two thousand cars backed up that I could count, and there's no way there weren't twice that over the crest of the bridge. People--even those with Ontario license plates--were swearing at the Canadian government for consenting to this nonsense."

Memories of the Fields
Port Huron resident Fred Ramsey, 72, extolled the virtues of the Vintage Tractor Parade. "I just love seeing these tractors. I grew up on a farm and vineyard here in St. Clair Township, and we had an old 1952 Minneapolis-Moline--it was an ugly thing...had a rusty orange color...." He heaved a sigh. "What a great old gal!"

The Black River Area Antique Power Club's annual Vintage Tractor Parade causes traffic snarls every year in Port Huron. "One year we had a 15-minute traffic jam," said Earl Roberts, 59. "For Port Huron that's like Detroit rush hour, so I hear."

After crossing the Blue Water Bridge, the parade ended at the Thomas Edison Inn, for Port Huron's Concours d'Elegance of tractors--110 of them on display, some from as far back as the 1940s.

Implicated & Exonerated
It seems that drivers stuck at the U.S. Border misplaced their ire. For while the tractors did cross the Blue Water Bridge, they turned around in a maintenance lane without ever getting off the bridge. Turns out the city leaders of Sarnia, Ontario saw the problem from the beginning. Tractors aren't allowed on the major roads leading off the bridge, because they are too big and slow, and would cause major traffic problems.

Popularity: 10% [?]

I know more than a little about ancient Greece, as Ancient Mediterranean History was the only major I seriously considered other than Music, and I took many of the requisite classes just because I was interested. The Greeks made significant impacts on the world that are still influencing our cultures (witness the Athenian system of government as but one example), and left behind physical manifestations of that cultural richness that serve as reminders of a fallen society. Not that we are good at learning from historical object lessons....

The Greeks had a special influence on wine and wine culture. They were in the vanguard of wine-making 5,000 years ago, and their wines were treasured across Europe, western Asia, and north Africa. Most people still don't think of anything beyond Retsina when it comes to Greek wine, if they know anything at all, but Greek wines are ascending nowadays, and the residual effect of this is that some of the Grecian wine-reveling past is attracting broader interest, too.

Drink & Be Merry
Take, for example, Greek wine cups, which are some of the most common works of ancient Mediterranean art still available for us to enjoy. These terra cotta wine cups depict common scenes of Athenian life in the Archaic period (about 2500 years ago). The cup shown above is a tall-handled cup, known as a kantharos, with a depiction of an orgy. And no, you can't click on the picture to make it bigger. Not tame, but then most people think of this aspect of ancient Greek society when they think of it at all. And as far as some other Greek art goes, we could safely call this PG-13.

So think of the Swinging 70's multiplied by a thousand, and that's a bit of Greek life 2,500 years ago--work hard (must kill the Spartans!), play hard (where's thy neighbor's wife?). This tall-handled cup is not the shape we most commonly see of a Greek wine drinking vessel. Museums across the country have more examples of the shape the Greeks called a kylix in their collections. The kylix looks like an inverted frisbee on a small pedestal. It was designed so that you can drink from it while reclining, which shows some incredible forethought: clearly it's an artistic 'party promoter' meant to prepare and, as you will see, eventually excite those soon to be taking part in the scene on the kantharos.

Anyway, the kylix is so flat and wide that I'd imagine it would be difficult not to slosh the wine out, especially when you read the inscription on this one as you stare into it to take a drink:

This is a fairly famous piece (and also probably not PG-13...) from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The words on the top are, "&Eta&epsilon &Rho&alpha&iota&sigma &Kappa&alpha&lambda&epsilon," which translates as "The girl is pretty." This is certainly innocent enough, in light of what is going on in the picture. Notice, though, the words cascading from the man's mouth: "&Eta&epsilon&xi&epsilon &Eta&epsilon&sigma&upsilon&xi&omicron&sigma" which of course means "Hold still!"

Background on the Kylix
This kind of thing was quite common, apparently. Here is some further illumination on the kylix from Wikipedia:

"The almost flat interior circle on the interior base of the cup, called the tondo, was the primary surface for painted decoration in the Black-figure or Red-figure styles of the 6th and 5th century BC. As the representations would be covered with wine, the scenes would only be revealed in stages as the wine was drained. They were often designed with this in mind, with scenes created so that they would surprise or titillate the drinker as they were revealed."

Sounds like it would be as much fun (considering that almost no artistic subject matter is taboo) to make one of these as it would be to drink from one. Since most of these wine cups are made of terra cotta, it is apparently not difficult to execute either the pottery or the glaze, so anyone could have made one of the wine cups, though, as you can imagine, only the works of masters are celebrated today.

In this way I guess it's like watercolor, but not as easy to clean up.

Popularity: 100% [?]