Another Norton note

This passage is from The Wild Vine by Todd Kliman, whose research into the history of the Norton grape brought him to Stone Hill winery. Kliman relates tasting notes from a dinner with Stone Hill executive Jon Held that included special aged Norton:

The food is good; the wine is even better. His Norton is everything I love in a red wine: It is complex and expressive, with a strong, identifiable character that only being bound so intimately and rigorously to a specific time and place can produce. It tastes like nothing else in the world, except perhaps another Norton. There is the wild earthiness I love, which seems to conceal within it a hundred unknowable mysteries, but it changes over time as we drink it, a living, breathing thing that opens up like a flower to become softer, more supple — a more subtle and interesting wine. (Page 187 of the 2010 paperback version)

Almost as good as Maya's wine-loving speech in Sideways, but lacking her bold finish.

The Stone Hill Norton that I enjoyed recently was a 2008 and not yet quite that heavenly.