SEX & PINOT NOIR

Joel Fleischman of Vanity Fair describes Pinot Noir as "the most romantic of wines, with so voluptuous a perfume, so sweet an edge, and so powerful a punch that, like falling in love, they make the blood run hot and the soul wax embarrassingly poetic." Master Sommelier, Madeline Triffon, calls Pinot Noir "sex in a glass," while Peter Richardsson of OenoStyle christened it "a seductive yet fickle mistress!" Robert Parker has said of Pinot Noir “When it's great, Pinot Noir produces the most complex, hedonistic, and remarkably thrilling red wine in the world.” The children’s author, Roald Dahl, once wrote that "to drink a Romanée-Conti [Pinot Noir] is like having an orgasm in the mouth and nose at the same time."

A grape which can inspire such passions can be paired only with a writer of sublime and sensuous sensitivity, such as King Solomon and his Song of Songs:  

               

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine … How graceful are your feet in sandals, O queenly maiden! Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand. Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. … You are stately as a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its branches. Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples, and your kisses like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth. I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.  Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields, and lodge in the villages; let us go out early to the vineyards, and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love."

Obviously inspired by the Song of Songs, and possibly a glass, or two, of Pinot Noir as well, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote in his “Ode to Wine:”

    "My darling, suddenly

     the line of your hip

     becomes the brimming curve

     of the wine goblet,

     your breast is the grape cluster,

     your nipples are the grapes,

     the gleam of spirits lights your hair,

     and your navel is a chaste seal

     stamped on the vessel of your belly,

     your love an inexhaustible

     cascade of wine."