This is the Colchagua Valley of Chile.
In the words of Yoda, “Obscure, it is.”
A few of you noticed the absence of a musical wine from last week’s rabbit hole. This great void, this echoing hollow, this yawning emptiness was due to the fact that YouTube contained no accurate audio representation for this wine.
I had to wait for David Nevland, the wizard’s audio engineer, to return from vacation so that he could craft the sound for you. In a phrase, I chose to be delinquent in delivery rather than deficient in description.
The problem, you see, is that this wine clearly contains sleigh bells, such as we associate with Santa’s reindeer, mixed with the nasal wail of bagpipes played by a Scotsman with an eyepatch. If you assume the music of a nation will show up in the music of its wines, you are clearly mistaken. Neither sleigh bells nor bagpipes are common in the Colchagua Valley on the Pacific coast of South America, yet they jingle and croon noisily from this dark Chilean nectar. Spanish wines rarely taste like Spanish music. French wines rarely taste like French music, Ditto for Australian and African, Belgian and Bolivian, all the way to Zaire and Zimbabwe.* [see next page]
Brother Nevland has now returned from his sojourn abroad to unite for us the disparate instruments that do soundly represent Secreto Malbec. If your schnoz is on the fritz due to allergies or the common cold, you may taste the sound of a kazoo instead of bagpipes, but the sleigh bells will be there regardless. Aroo.
– Indiana