On Friday afternoon, Tracie and I checked into our favorite Houston hotel for a staycation-10th-wedding-anniversary celebration (her parents had come into Houston to pick up the girls at school and spend the evening with them).
Around 5 p.m., we turned on CNN (a treat for us since we cut our cable nearly a year ago), opened a bag of our favorite potato chips, and lounged on our hotel room’s dark brown leather-bound armchairs as we sipped cellar-temperature Dario Prinčič 2015 Venezia Giulia IGT Pinot Grigio, unfiltered, 13 percent alcohol.
As Senate Republicans ceremoniously reveled in their sycophancy for our imperious president, tabling one by one their Democrat colleagues’ Maginot Lines in the sand, Tracie and I were lost in our own world. We remembered fondly how we drank Joly Coulée de Serrant and ate chips at that same hotel in 2009, less than a year before we were married, when the world seemed a different place brimming with hope and promise.
The wine — five-year-old Pinot Grigio from one of our favorite growers — was bright and lithe in the glass, like that first year of our courtship. If you didn’t know any better, you’d have thought the wine was from a more recent vintage. Its fruit was so vibrant and pure and its nose so fresh, you could hardly believe it was harvested before the current era of uncertainty and perturbation.
Yet it was, just like our love affair.
We drank it with gusto, one of our perennial favorites.
Later that evening we sat for dinner at one of our city’s most in-demand tables, the oddly named Rosie Canonball, where the texture of Chef Felipe Riccio’s superb cavatelli reminded us of a trip to Puglia when our oldest was just a babe.
By noon the next day, we were sitting with Tracie’s parents and our daughters at Wasfi’s Grill and Hookah, a new favorite recommended by my friend Ahmad. The falafel was moreish, the grilled lamb excellent.
It was a beautiful day in Houston, with clear blue skies and a gentle breeze.
There are many challenges that lay ahead but our hearts are renewed and refilled, teeming once again with hope and promise.
I love you, Tracie P… You are my life, my love, my lover and muse.
Do Bianchi 
That looks like a RED Pinot Grigio — can you clarify, Jeremy?
Mike, always great to see you here. Pinot Grigio is actually a red grape (in America we’ve been taught to think it’s a white grape because it’s generally vinified “off its skins” for the U.S. market). Knowing your taste in wine, I think you’d like the Prinčič as much as we do. :)
Dario 2015 pinot grigio is one of the best wines of all time, and if you don’t agree with me here, then you don’t know how to do a proper wine tasting. Most people I know agree with the statement I’ve made here.
I agree wholeheartedly! That’s why we drank it for our anniversary. :)