“I HAVE NOT BEEN COMPROMISED
BY THE LIZARD PEOPLE.”
My mom was always terrified by Bugs Bunny. I think she was worried he was going to convince her it was actually duck season and she’d end up blowing her own beak around to the back of her head. Yeah, that chaotic trickster vengeance thing really got to her. Because when someone messes with Bugs Bunny, his vengeance is sure, swift, and elaborate. And that fuzzy fucker has no concept of proportionality. Say you’re practicing for your big opera performance. You’ve worked hard, spent a lifetime preparing to express yourself in song. But you better hope you don’t sing too loud during rehearsal. Because if you wake Bugs up from a nap, that goddamn demon rabbit will drive you insane, embarrass you in front of thousands, then destroy the opera house, presumably killing you, the orchestra, and the audience. Bugs Bunny was NAPPING. You knew the rules.
Mom loved Road Runner, though. The lines of good and evil are easier to parse. The hero is barely even there. Just the faintest whisper of personality, embodied by an idiot grin and superhuman speed. The Road Runner’s primary character trait is his ability to remain unfazed by the fact that the same deranged, yet highly creative coyote has been stalking him across the desert for forty years with a bloodlust that would make Patrick Bateman blush. Why does Wile E. Coyote want this one bird so goddamn badly? Are roadrunners that delicious? Is this one particularly succulent? Is this the first roadrunner he’s tried to kill? Or has he eliminated all other roadrunners in the world and is having trouble with the last one? Is he incompetent or merely experiencing an uncanny string of bad luck? Does he even remember why he’s chasing this fool bird? It matters not.
What matters is the object lesson that is enacted again and again in every installment. The coyote is always foiled, but never by the Road Runner. He is only ever defeated by himself and his wicked desires. Had the coyote not pursued the Road Runner, he would not have ordered a giant wrecking ball rig be delivered to the desert, thus making it impossible for him to be flattened by said wrecking ball. Had he not tied a rocket to his back, that selfsame rocket would not have blown him up after crashing headlong into a mountain. Wile E. Coyote is the ultimate Catholic, summoning his own doom through his sinful urges. Jesus didn’t die for Wile E. Coyote’s sins. Wile E. Coyote did. Over and over and over and over. I think Mom found that comforting.
So while Bugs seemed to torture her, when she watched Road Runner, Mom would just smile, shake her head, and tsk a little. Figures. Stupid Coyote. When you gonna learn?
I felt more coyote than roadrunner as I entered New Mexico on US 380. The gravity-defying rock formations and sandy colors of the landscape around there look an awful lot like the desert scenery from the cartoons. And while I didn’t see any wrecking balls or rocket debris, around eighty miles in I did start to see signs promoting various attractions in the town of Roswell, home of the mysterious Area 51 air force base and site of the 1947 weather balloon crash that definitely 100 percent had nothing to do with our government covering up the fact that they shot down a UFO and recovered a crew member whom they experimented on, leading them to engineer a human/alien hybrid named Arnold Schwarzenegger who would eventually be sent back in time to kill John F. Kennedy to stop him from revealing the truth about the space program and the secret moon base manned by Buzz Aldrin clones and their army of robot sex slaves. Let me reiterate. ALL OF THAT IS 100 PERCENT FALSE AND I HAVE NOT BEEN COMPROMISED BY THE LIZARD PEOPLE. I’m just saying, Arnold was born in 1947. Coincidences are for people who can’t handle the truth.
So you tell me. Is it coincidence that the International UFO Museum and Research Center just happens to be in Roswell? Wake up, people.
Frankly, all I wanted to do was push on through to Albuquerque, where I had resolved to make some left turns to honor the almighty Chaos Rabbit and jangle Mom’s nerves. But as I rolled through Big Roz, I saw a sign for a wine store called Pecos Flavors. Like I’m going to be able to pass that up.
Pecos Flavors is a funky little place located right on Roswell’s main drag. As you’d expect, they carry novelty items like Alien Amber Ale and Galactic Cabernet. Gotta keep those conspiracy tourists loaded. But Pecos’s shelves are also stocked with wine from a number of excellent New Mexico producers such as D.H. Lescombes and Tularosa Vineyards. I picked up a bottle of Jemez Red from Ponderosa Valley Vineyards in northern New Mexico. It’s a blend of Baco Noir (a hybrid of Pinot Noir and, I assume, bacon), Ruby Cabernet (a cross between Cabernet Sauvignon and Carignan), and Nebbiolo. It’s no 2009 Léoville-Barton, but it’s a solid flavorful little bottle with plenty of bold fruit flavor and more than a little backbone and it sells for just $20. It’s one of my go-to wines when people doubt there’s good juice in the nontraditional winemaking regions of the USA.
It’s also one of my go-to wines when people say California is the “traditional” winemaking region of the United States. Because people have been cultivating grapevines in New Mexico for over four hundred years (or in European terms, ten minutes), making it the oldest wine-growing region in the United States. There are nearly thirty wineries across the state that produce four hundred thousand gallons of vino annually. Still, most of us have never tried New Mexico wine. There’s only one explanation. Those goddamn aliens.
Aliens were also likely to blame for the fact that Dan Dunn, the world’s foremost expert on becoming an expert on American wine, had only allotted enough time to swing by a single winery on his way through New Mexico, the country’s oldest winemaking region. It definitely wasn’t because the road had worn me down. Or because I was dog tired and ready to go home. Or because a representative from the Lizard People had gotten in touch, none too subtly either, and made it clear that the “dreams” where I’m fellating Arnold Schwarzenegger will continue until I stop sniffing around their home base. Frankly, at this point in the journey, I wasn’t sure of my own address. Oh wait, yes I was. Dan Dunn, 1 Carl Vehicle, USA, USA. (USA! USA! USA! USA!)
But I did know this: if you were to only visit one winery in New Mexico on your exhaustively complete inventory of the nation’s vineyards, it ought to be Gruet. These guys are the leading purveyor of sparkling wine this side of Sonoma County.
I knew I’d have to break into the bubbly at some point on this trip. Sparkling wine is sometimes called the “happy accident” by winemakers, due to its serendipitous origins. And how’s about this for a detail you’ll think I made up, but I assure you is 100 percent true: “The Happy Accident” was my family’s pet name for me when I was just a wee lad, due to my sparkling personality and serendipitous origins. Sparkling wine is my spirit animal. We’re blunder brothers!
Primitive societies blamed the mysterious appearance of bubbles in their wine on phases of the moon and evil spirits. My mom’s family blamed the mysterious appearance of me in their midst on the same two things (not to mention fizzy beverages).
The same way my teenage father never intended to stick a baby in crazy Charlene from down the block, it was never anyone’s intention to foster fizz in fermented grape juice. But once they got a taste for how rewarding it was, they figured why not do it again, only this time intentionally and without treating it quite as terribly. Which explains both Dom Perignon and my giant network of siblings from all the other various couplings that followed Dan and Charlene’s teenage backseat frolic. The fact that the first sparkling wine was probably a stomach-turning abomination is where this metaphor breaks down. (Shut up, it does.)
Carbonated happy juice became a growing concern around 350 years ago, when a lot of wine was being exported to England from the Champagne region of France. Thing is, it gets cold in Champagne in the fall after the harvest. So cold that often the wine’s fermentation would stop prematurely, leaving residual sugars and dormant yeast in the barrels, which was then bottled up tight and shipped to warmer climes. However, when the bottles warmed up, the increase in temperature woke up the yeasties who started eating up all the leftover sugar and crapping out alcohol and carbon dioxide as per usual. A second fermentation. Only now, since it was in a glass bottle instead of a nonairtight cask, when the excess CO2 couldn’t escape, it went into solution in the wine, creating the classy gassy glass of headache we love so well today.
Now you may hear stories of a French Benedictine monk named Pierre “Dom” Perignon, and how he was the first to declare the sparkling tendency of wines from Champagne as a desirable trait by shouting, “Come quickly! I am tasting stars!” And while it is tempting to make fun of the homoerotic overtones of such a statement by a man of the cloth who spent most of his adult life cooped up with other men of the cloth and an unlimited supply of fizzy, fizzy wine, I assure you I would never sully the legacy of Dom Perignon. Instead I consider it a testament to his legacy that it wouldn’t be out of place to hear someone exclaim his famous catchphrase in a West Hollywood cruising spot.
And in all fairness, credit for popularizing Champagne rightfully belongs to seventeenth-century London hipsters, the first to embrace the sweet wines that had gotten their fizz on during the long journey across the English Channel. Eventually, of course, secondary fermentation was induced intentionally and became known as the “Champagne method,” or méthode champenoise.
FIVE FACTS ABOUT SPARKLING WINE
1. All Champagne is sparkling wine, but not all sparkling wine is Champagne.
2. A 750 ml bottle of sparkling wine contains roughly 49 million bubbles. The pressure from all those tiny gas balls causes corks to pop at an average velocity of 40 mph.
3. When in doubt, use any of these five simple go-to modifiers, to describe what you’re drinking: complex; balanced; layered; intense; well-rounded. We’ve been over this before, but it bears repeating.
4. Marilyn Monroe once took a Champagne bath. It reportedly took 350 bottles to fill the tub, which subsequently took its own life. Its last words were, “I’ll never top this.”
5. The indentation found at the bottom of many wine bottles is called a punt. Modern glass technology has rendered the punt functionally useless, but it endures primarily because wine consumers, unlike football fans, equate punts with quality.
Today’s most celebrated sparkling wines still come from the historic province in France where bubbly was born and are made primarily with Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay. The juice from the Champagne houses of Krug, Cristal, Perrier-Jouët, and, of course, Dom Perignon are staples on exclusive wine lists the world over. But in recent years, as wine’s consumer base has increased, so too has the demand for sparkling stuff produced for a couple bucks less, regardless of its pedigree.
As you may have noticed, I consulted “Sommelier to the Stars” Chris Sawyer (how them stars tasting, Chris?) regularly throughout the trip. I should remind you that Chris hails from Sonoma County. When I asked about the state of bubbly in America, he pointed to the fact that many of the great Champagne houses have purchased vineyards in Northern California in recent years, which he says is a sign that New World sparkling wines are becoming a force to be reckoned with. “The coastal areas of California have the ultimate climate and soil conditions to produce great sparkling wine,” he said. “There are things we can do here that they can’t do in France, such as ripen the grapes to perfection year in and year out. And we can do it more cost effectively.” Fair enough, Chris Sawyer, but can you ride a bike in a striped shirt and mustache while carrying a brace of onions and a baguette? Have I found your Kryptonite? Or as the French pronounce it, Le Cheez Whiz?
After Chris pointed out that my stereotypes of French people were super racist and I pointed out that French isn’t so much a race as a disease and he pointed out that this was also probably overly harsh and I pointed out that I was just having a little fun because come on, look at those shirts and onions and bicycles, and he pointed out that my entire conception of France comes from Looney Tunes and I mentioned that my mother hated the Chaos Rabbit and he shouted Aha!, I knew we’d get to the bottom of this. He singled out acclaimed California producers Schramsberg, Domaine Carneros, and Roederer Estate among the finest this country has to offer. You’ll find they’re staples at many of the country’s higher-end fine dining establishments. To my surprise, though, Chris was also effusive in his praise for Gruet, which is made in Albuquerque. Chaos Rabbit country.
Too bad I’m a goddamn coyote. And just like old Wile E. trying to chase the Road Runner into a landscape he’d painted across the highway, I was hitting the wall. Carl Vehicle could refuel whenever he got thirsty, get an oil change and a little radiator fluid, but my internal fuel light was on, as was my Check Engine flag. My battery was struggling to get things going every morning, my front end badly needed adjustment (a man gets lonely on the road), and my rear differential left a lot to be desired. Plus, I had begun to talk almost exclusively in car metaphors. Basically, I needed to get off the got damn road for a while. But at this point, the only way out was through. Through the Land of Fucking Enchantment. But I was only going to be able to handle one New Mexican winery at best. Carl Vehicle, I command you, take me to Albuquerque.
Gruet’s Blanc de Noirs is absolutely dynamite. It’s light, festive, and pops with crisp fruit flavor. Pop a bottle at brunch with some Kumamoto oysters and send me a thank-you note. Plus, it retails for under twenty bucks a bottle. If they slapped Napa or Champagne on the label, people would happily pay four times as much. It’s definitely the best bubbly value in America, maybe even the world.
The Gruet family, quelle surprise, hails from France. My previous comments about their home country notwithstanding, they are a wonderful group of folks. Over dinner at the Hotel Andaluz in downtown Albuquerque, assistant winemaker Sofian Himeur plied me with much bubbly and tales of his grandfather, the company’s founder, Gilbert Gruet.
Gilbert grew up in a small town called Bethon, where he dreamed of someday having a Champagne house of his own. Gruet et Fils started producing bubbly in Bethon in 1952. Thirty years later, while traveling through New Mexico, Gilbert met a group of European winemakers who had successfully planted vineyards near the town of Truth or Consequences, 170 miles south of Albuquerque.
“Back then New Mexico really, truly was the Wild West. And you can imagine how intimidating it must have been for someone coming from a small village in France,” said Sofian. “My grandfather was a risk taker, though, a real badass. He saw something in this vast, uncultivated land. Opportunity. He had a very clear vision of a future few others could have even imagined.”
The land was inexpensive, the opportunity golden, and the town name too colorful to pass up. Gilbert decided to plant an experimental vineyard with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. A year later, he and his wife and kids relocated to the great state of New Mexico and a fabulous success story began.
“To me, Gruet, and the success we’ve had so far, it’s what America is all about in the eyes of so many people around the world,” Sofian said. “My family came here because there was opportunity. Everyone worked their asses off to make it happen. And it happened—last year we sold a hundred twenty-five thousand cases. We’re making amazing sparkling wine in New Mexico, man. Life is good!”
Indeed it is. And it only got better that night because, man, did we ever drink a lot of amazing sparkling wine in New Mexico.
To further convince myself of my coyote-like ability for self-inflicted harm, the only other thing I did of note during my twenty-four-hour stopover in Albuquerque was pay a stripper at Knockouts to massage me. No weird stuff and no happy ending. Just a firm kneading of my aching neck and shoulders, during which I may or may not have lost track of time. If you were curious about what this kind of thing will run you in New Mexico, twelve songs plus tip will still run you $150, even when all her clothes stay on.
But one thing was clear. I needed to get out of New Mexico before I ended up ordering anything else from Acme.