Sorry, We've Reviewed Your Miracles
TASTING NOTES: The 2021 St. Laurent from Ricci Vineyard is a rare bird, with less than 10 acres of the grape known to be planted domestically. Earthy, botanical aromatics, with cedar and herbs jumping out of the glass. The palate is quite bright and fruity in contrast to the spice rack on the nose, cherry and pomegranate fill the center with some stemmy spice wrapping up the finish.
VARIETALS: St. Laurent
BARRELS: Fermented indigenously with 50% carbonic maceration, pressed at dryness and aged in neutral French oak for 30 months of elevage.
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: The name Filomena.
Filomena is one of those names that sounds like it should belong to a woman who knows things. Not things she learned — things she knows. The kind of woman who can tell when rain is coming by the way her knees feel, who has a specific drawer for string, who makes a soup that tastes different every time but is somehow always exactly right. The name has weight to it. Gravity. You don’t name a golden retriever Filomena. You don’t name a yacht Filomena. Filomena is the woman at the head of the table who doesn’t say much until she says something, and then the room goes quiet.
It’s a saint’s name, of course — Saint Philomena, martyred somewhere around the third century, her bones discovered in a Roman catacomb in 1802 with tiles bearing the inscription Peace be with you, Philomena. She became enormously popular, miracles attributed left and right, a full cult following. The Vatican eventually delisted her in 1961 — not enough historical evidence — which feels like an almost comically bureaucratic ending to fourteen centuries of devotion. Sorry, we’ve reviewed your paperwork and it seems you may not have existed. Please disregard all previous miracles.
What’s left is the name itself, and what people do with it. In Luke Nio’s case: a wine label, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, a family photo from 1926 — Prohibition in full swing, vineyards being ripped out across California — and the quiet act of putting her face on a bottle of something she probably wasn’t allowed to drink.
