Act I
You won’t remember this first bit. You won’t remember the weather, the shoes you were wearing. You won’t remember talking on the phone, or eating dessert. After all, it’s just a Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe Sunday. For as long as you’ve been alive, there have been Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and Sundays.
The thing is, right now, you’re optimally poised for plot. One rich, absurd, gleaming fact of singlehood is that nothing is fixed. You smell of plausibility. Each time you leave the house—a bodega coffee, a dinner with friends, a run in the park—something might happen.
You might, for instance, find yourself carrying on some vague conversation with someone who makes you good-sick—as if you’ve introduced foreign matter to your biome. It’s the precise nausea of tourism, your insides responding to the presence of something novel, unfamiliar.
It tastes like anticipation: the lean, raw drumbeat before the rest of a song floods in. But it’s muted; you’re not listening yet. In retrospect, you’ll wish you’d taken notes, that you’d remembered what shoes you were wearing. That you’d understood more precisely that a Wednesday is never really a Wednesday if you take the time to write it down. Wednesday is the day before Thursday.
Here’s what it will taste like: Muscat from the Languedoc-Roussillon. More aromatics than anything else. Something intangible, perfumey; all on the nose. It’s wine that’s all prologue. Then again, Wednesday is the day before Thursday.
Le Petit Domaine de Gimios, "Muscat Sec Des Roumais" 2020
Domaine Cotzé Wilfried Garcia Transhumància Rouge 2023
Le Temps Retrouvé, "Muscat" 2023
Les Cigales dans la Fourmilière Escarpolette Blanc 2024
Act II
The second part is like waking up first in a house full of people. You’ve blinked yourself into consciousness in some private window of time, made all the richer for your giddy anticipation. There’s a quiet solitude, but you know it won’t last.
You’re not in a house full of people, though. It’s not some absurd hour of the day. What you’re doing is getting dressed for a date. And what does one wear to fall in love? Probably Levi’s, a white T-shirt, something that invites projection. Or something big and structured, maximal, because why not show up in ALL CAPS? A breezy dress? Perhaps shoes that imply a certain sturdiness. A rapport with the ground.
Somewhere in your abdomen, you know that whatever’s happening now is the thing before the thing. There’s substance here. You remember the day of the week, because some tightness in your sternum is telling you: Save this part. Just in case.
It tastes like vin jaune, from Arbois maybe. Fermented past its due date, and all the louder and sharper for it. It might be nutty, spicy, some other adjective—but mostly what you taste is the acid. The high-octane feral-ness of it. Once you’ve swallowed, it stays in your mouth for longer than you’re used to. Today is the day after Wednesday.
Anders Frederik Steen 'Aging a Wildflower' VDF White Vin Jaune 2013
Vin Jaune, Domaine des Ronces 2016
Marnes Blanches Vin Jaune 2016
Act III
They’re here, whoever they are, and they’re made of all the same materials you’re made of: skin, fingernails, knee caps. They’re wearing clothes; you’re wearing clothes. But all of these things are new on them. You can’t stop looking at their hands.
Both of you speak in such eager bursts, the wind of your rapport extinguishes the candle set between you—once, twice, a third time. Eventually, the waiter stops coming back to reignite it. Your speech has a tempo. It moves ceaselessly, rhythmically, converging in some sloppy, ideal mass like ingredients folded into one another. There are so many questions, twice as many answers, no anecdote expedited for the sake of efficiency. All the nuances, the textures of your conversation, the weight of your statements—they all feel worth their salt. Expensive salt. Maldon in a glass jar.
While you sit here, at this otherwise forgettable (though now impossible to forget) bar, time renegotiates its onward march. It trips over itself, moving at double speed. It‘s 8 p.m., then it’s midnight, then all of a sudden, it’s far too late for the day after a Wednesday. The problem is, there’s more to say—and for whatever reason, it feels urgent. You must keep speaking. You need to ask, answer, tell, explain. It’s like breathing: thoughtless, vital, demanding of continuity.
Here’s what it tastes like. Catarratto from Sicily, a bit of skin contact maybe, vivid in color, geometric in flavor. There’s some crunch, some weight, it takes up space in your mouth: fleshy and sharp at once, like a pentagon. It’s a wine that keeps going and going and going. It never seems to finish. Never leaves your palate completely, lingers like a stain. God, it tastes like a meal. Sating, almost.
Alessandro Viola Carricat Orange 2023
Catarratto "Praruar," Il Censo 2020
Act IV
When you kiss, you feel carbonated. It’s funny—at first, speaking felt essential, some survival instinct worth heeding. But now, there’s this. This wordless employment of your mouths somehow equal in its ferocious urgency. You’re drinking directly from the source, no more second-hand information. Just tongues, teeth, gums; a conversation of its own variety.
Every bit of this feels new, like you’ve never had hands on the small of your back before. Not on your neck, or nestled in your hair. You have, of course, experienced hands in all those places, but nonetheless, it feels like uncharted territory. Like these hands are touching something all the hands that came before missed entirely.
You will kiss again, the two of you. You know this in the meat of your bones from the moment you break apart. But you’ll only kiss for the first time once. By the laws of firsts, it’s a simple, temporal fact. So this, right now, is something. And suddenly, Thursday is not a Thursday. Now, it’s a national holiday. Banks must close, children must file home from school to bake cakes and light sparklers.
It tastes like Champagne—the good stuff, the real stuff, the only-grown-on-holy-ground stuff. Irreplaceable by any other name, any other soil. Meant to be drunk fast before the bubbles deflate—small sips that feel like holding your breath. And you have, haven’t you? Tonight, you’ve spent far less time breathing than usual.
NV Champagne Chavost, Blanc d'Assemblage Brut Nature
Jacques Lassaigne, "Millèsime" 2015
Étienne Calsac, “L’Échappée Belle” NV
Act V
You’ll sound like an imposter when you use the word fuck—something about the cruel staccato of consonants. But having sex feels far too clinical a phrase for whatever this is. This right here is the reason people go mad, write poems, speak French. This is, at once, the most human and least earthly phenomenon you’ve ever experienced. And what logic is that?
Later, you’ll think to yourself that it’s the closest thing to any meditative-bliss state you’ve achieved. The most in your body you can recall feeling; fervently within your limbs without interior dialogue. Maybe you’ll come first (you never come first). Maybe second. Maybe you won’t come at all. Either way, there are no theatrics. Either way, you know that this thing you’re doing—fucking—is like some kind of contact with the supernatural.
You’d write about it, only that’s not how it works. Whatever it is isn’t meant to live within the confines of verbs and adverbs. It’s not meant to be filtered through your mental thesaurus. It lives in your knees, your neck, your throat.
It tastes like riesling from The Mosel. Inarguably rare, astoundingly balanced, ripe as hell, off-dry, if you will. This thing, it calls for residual sugar. Something sweet and bright, grounded by a minerality like wet rocks in a Calvino novel, the inside of an oyster shell. Body that’s light and lithe—body that moves.
Daniel Vollenweider Riesling Wolfer Goldgrube Spatlese Feinherb AP 6 2022
Julian Haart Riesling Moselle 2024
Joh. Jos. Christoffel Erben “Ürziger Würzgarten” Riesling Trocken 2023
Act VI
You wake up folded into limbs that aren’t yours, sheets that don’t belong to you, the cloudy human smell of sleep. You think that these ambient quiet hands resting against your skin work like aloe, some instantaneous site-specific soothing.
Once you’re both conscious, you drink coffee—you in a borrowed T-shirt, cotton underwear, ribbed socks. You sit on the counter and you talk, delighting in the post-coital warmth, in the apparent and easy urge to stay right where you are, ward off the day and all its slender promises. You feel sorry for everyone who’s ever thought, I could do this forever, and been wrong. So many have been wrong, haven’t they, but not you. Not you, not you, not you. Right now, you’re the exception to the rule, you’re sure of it. In all the grand history of time, no one has ever been so sure as you.
It tastes like Aligoté from Chablis—classic, clean, sturdy. Like pennies, coffee grounds, old silverware. People spend catastrophic amounts of money for things that taste this reliable, have this much potential. For you—well, for you, it’s free.
Chateau de Beru 'Les vins d'Athenais' Bourgogne Aligoté 2022
Rémi Jeanniard - Bourgogne Aligoté 2022
Bourgogne Aligoté, Sylvain Pataille 2022
Act VII
Altitude changes the texture of things. Aboard a plane, everything sounds different—the tinny noise of this or that award-winning film snaking through complimentary headphones, the shallow breath of sleep, the muted clack of ice against a plastic cup. On your first flight together, you fold into one another tidily, your conjoined limbs somehow locating a version of grace entirely incongruous with the constraints of your airline seats.
When you land, you feel drunk on the elsewhere of it all. It’s just the two of you, your context having been wiped away. Just the two of you moving through space, a tethered thing, a unit unto yourselves.
It tastes like some bottle from the Canary Islands—Listán Blanco or Malvasía, maybe. Indisputable notes of gasoline. Like going somewhere fast. Or, come to think of it, going somewhere slow. Doesn’t matter, really, so long as you’re going. That’s what walking together on foreign ground tastes like to you: like momentum.
Envinate 'Palo Blanco', Canary Islands, Spain 2023
Borja Perez Viticultor 'Artifice' Listán Blanco Ycoden-Daute-Isora 2018
Taro Vinícola (Pablo Matallana), "Frías" 2021
Act VIII
No one’s ever told you that loving someone will have a flavor. That I love you will taste like something. You don’t mean to say it—or maybe you do, in some primal, more assured part of your body. It just flees you like an exhale. You can’t help it, it’s been stuck in your mouth, wearing down the edges of your teeth, itching for air.
It tastes like butter and lemon, white sugar—ingredients you might combine with your hands. But also, like something heavier, stricter, more serious: permanent marker, Campari.
For you, the saying it is something—but Jesus Christ, the hearing it. It sounds like being forgiven. Like what the doorman says before admitting you to heaven.
It tastes like hyperbole. Like chardonnay from The Jura—something so high-decibel, it’s hard to believe you’re meant to swallow it. In theory, you should decant it, give it some time, but that’s not the point. The point is drinking it at its most electric—at its least tame.
Domaine des Notes Bleues Cotes du Jura Chardonnay - La Pierre, Les Asscisses 2023
Cellier Saint Benoit Arbois-Pupillin 'La Marcette' Chardonnay, Jura, France 2022
Domaine des Marnes Blanches Cotes du Jura 'Les Molates' Chardonnay, France 2023
Epilogue
You’re reading. In the room next door: some tick of gas wheezes from the stovetop. You’re listening to the metallic clank of pan, stove, whisk—they run together like piano scales. The rhythm is reliable—someone is cooking, you are reading. You turn a page, grin, keep reading, keep inhaling. It’s like it’s always been like this.
This is what it tastes like: Pinot Noir from the Finger Lakes. Fruit so astoundingly lovely you can’t fathom that it comes from so close to home, that you need not cross an ocean for grapes like these. But some days—days like this one—coming home tastes like Burgundy. Like something you’d bottle, ferment, preserve, upsell at Sotheby’s. Something you’d cellar for fifty years, open on your birthday, drink like holy water.
In any case, today is the day after Thursday.
Tibo Pinot, Barbichette, Finger Lakes, New York, USA 2023
Nathan Kendall 'Nathan K.' Pinot Noir Finger Lakes, New York, USA 2021
Heart & Hands Wine Company, Charlie's Vineyard Estate Pinot, Finger Lakes, New York, USA 2020
