I really enjoyed Eric the Red’s article this week in The New York Times, “Weighing the Importance of Setting a Date (Champagne disgorgement dates provoke debate).”

It brought to mind a wine that Tracie P and I shared earlier this year, a baby gift from one of my best friends, and a wine that made me question the wisdom of Alfonso’s excellent post today on “The Ultimate Wine,” in other words, as Alfonso put it, That by which you can taste, but that which you can never taste.

The 1999 Bollinger Grande Année Rosé was simply one of the best wines we’ve ever shared together… pretty much as close to an “ultimate” wine as you can get…

BTW, if you’ve never heard the song that Céline and I wrote and recorded about Bollinger, here’s a link to listen. It’s from our album Ménagerie (Aeronaut 2009).

Perhaps only in Barbaresco have I encountered this wine’s ineffable, sublime balance of power and lightness (the “unbearable lightness,” I like to call it). But where Barbaresco tends toward earth and truffle, great Champagne like this bottling evokes salinity and the sea.

Of course, Tracie P and I shared with our sommelier (Mark Sayre, who generously allows us to bring special bottles into Trio at the Four Seasons and who expertly serves them to us). And he, too, was stunned by the elegance, focus, and precision of this nearly perfectly formed bottle.

I write nearly because as Alfonso rightly points out in his superb post today, the ultimate wine cannot and does not exist — even if for a brief fleeting instant, Tracie P and I, had a glimpse of it.

Thanks again, MAS, for the wine! And buon weekend, yall!