After reading the Bespaloff book, I decided that I wanted to try some of the more esoteric wines of France.  I knew that I would have no problems finding wines from the popular regions like Bordeaux or Burgundy.  Every restaurant and wine shop with any self-respect would carry a fine assortment from these areas, so that would be easy.

One area the tickled my fancy immediately was Anjou in the Loire Valley of France.  After all, in literature a famous quartet would have picnics on the ramparts, prior to or after a military maneuver.  If the wine was good enough for Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D”Artagnan, I should endeavor to try it.  You see in my youth, I had high aspirations and colorful role models.

Several shopping trips led to no success.  In the early seventies when I started my wine education, the selection of wines even in better shops was limited.  I am sure that a lot of the distributors were more interested in securing the rights to sure-sellers.  Also you really couldn’t blame a retailer for wanting to carry wines that would sell on their own, with a song and dance by the owner.  It would be easier to wax poetic for fifty dollar wine, then to exert time and energy for a ten-dollar wine.  Business is business.  I finally found a bottle of Anjou, not only an Anjou, but a more unique one.  A Rose de Cabernet made from the Cabernet grape and not the Groslot grape.

Since it was a rose wine, I waited until the weather turned warmer, which was very soon.  I chilled it, and tried it with cheese and some deli cuts.  My first reaction (from the time I bought the bottle) was the unique color of the wine.  It had an orange shade to the red and the nose was very soft and as they say unassuming.  On the warm day, that I had it, it was refreshing.  Alas, I knew that I would not join the ranks of the famed quartet of Frenchmen, but my curiosity had been sated.