Our dear friend who dubbed himself The Wine Raconteur Jr. invited us out to see him perform and we have seen him musically several times. By trade he is an engineer which is a great profession especially in the Detroit area and he is also a musician who will sit in with bands when needed, especially for the schools that he has attended. It was in the latter capacity that we saw him when he aided the Henry Ford College Metropolitan Symphony Band, that particular school was only a few years ago Henry Ford Community College and before that it was Dearborn Junior College and it started out as Fordson Junior College, though when I was in high school and would use their library at times for studies it was known as “Hank High.” That evening we listened to Sousa’s “The Pride of the Wolverines,” Bellstedt’s “Napoli” which is known colloquially as “Funiculi, Funicula” with a guest Euphonium soloist, Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” (thankfully my Bride did not try to sing along with) and Prokofieff’s “Variation on a Theme.”

After the concert, we met up with the musician and his parents and we decided to go have a drink. I guess you could call it a casual “afterglow.” Of course, I thought the perfect setting would be at The Henry, which was originally the Ritz-Carlton of Dearborn and where my Bride and I had coffee the first night we met. I guess you can call us a couple of old romantics, as it was only ten days later then that original night in 1993, so there were the five of us, as The Wine Raconteur Jr. had to leave his Bride at home to watch their children.

That evening I was the odd man out, which is often the case, as I was the only one to have some wine. The others were all having cocktails and I was maneuvering around with the I-Pad menu looking for wines by the glass. My first choice was no longer available by the glass and only by the bottle, so I had a late start with the other revelers. I had a glass of Chateau de Sancerre 2015 from Sancerre in the Upper Loire of the Loire Valley of France. This is a fine bottle of wine made from Sauvignon Blanc, the premier grape of the region and it was aged on the lees for six months in Stainless Steel before bottling. This winery was founded in 1919 by Louis-Alexander Marnier Lapostolle, whose family back in 1827 created the liqueur Grand Marnier and years later also started Lapostolle wines in Chile. I guess one could say that the evening was steeped in history from my viewpoint and what a great evening it was.