Welcome to A Case of Personalities inaugural Wine of the Week post!

The Wine: Gary Farrell 2014 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, Calera clone

The Pairing: Pork roast, potatoes, artichoke, SF Sourdough bread.

The Personality: Mark Twain.

The Company: The Mom and The Dad

          

…….

In retrospect, perhaps we should have waited to bestow the honor of being compared to Mark Twain until we had a few more Wine’s of the Week under our belt.

But the Gary Farrell 2014 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, Calera clone, deserves the name so we’re sticking to it.

The first sips of this wine immediately highlight it’s complexity. Bursts of mature fruit tones, followed by an incredibly balanced mouth feel and beautiful tannic structure.

Names began to float to the surface as we discussed what, or rather who, this wine personified.

“It needs to be a strong, friendly, witty person. There’s a sense of non cynical openness at the start, with all the nice fruit, but then fantastic tannins moving back on the tongue – so not someone overly sweet.”

“Dustin Hoffman?” “No, he’s more of a cabernet…”

“Maybe a comedian…but not like an Ellen Degeneres, she’s a much lighter wine.”

“Julie Andrews would work if more people knew she has a wicked, sharp, sense of humor.”

“What about Carol Burnett?”

We mulled over this for quite a while. The discussion turned from wine to chatting about old television, and how much better we felt it was than today. I mention that I had watched a couple episodes of the Dick Van Dyke show on Netflix and was surprised at how much the humor held up. We chat about how no one has matched Johnny Carson. Carol’s famous Gone With the Wind spoof came up as well as her many collaborations with Julie Andrews.

But as we continued to sip, we all agreed something about Carol wasn’t quite synching with the wine.

Maybe she’s just a little bit too silly, we decided.

And suddenly it came to me. “Mark Twain!”

He’s witty, intelligent, but not too serious. Definitely the kind of personality we were looking for. This wine tastes like it has southern tales to tell on the porch, but also isn’t stuck there. It’s a friendly wanderer – and Mark Twain himself spend some time along the California coast – solidifying our choice.

“There are no standards of taste in wine… Each man’s own taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard.” – Mark Twain

Do you agree? Did we totally miss the mark? Let me know your opinion of this wine in a comment!

~Keep Sipping, Keep Swirling